Solid-State Slow-Light Beam Scanner With Ultra-Large Field of View and High Resolution

A light beam scanning technology for 3D sensing has been attracting much interest thanks to its signal-to-noise-ratio merit compared to conventional flash 3D sensing. A Solid-state beam scanner based on a vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) with amplification function was invented. In this paper, though enlarging the length of scanner to 6 mm, a narrow beam divergence of <0.025 degrees was recorded. We proposed and developed a solid-state scanner with ultra-large field of view and high resolution by counter-propagation integration and by equipping a one-dimensional 7-spot diffractive optical element (DOE), functioning a beam splitter. It greatly enlarged the field of view to 105 degrees with maintaining the narrow beam divergence. A record number of resolution points of >4000 was obtained. Its intensity variation is < 40% and could be further improved by better DOE design and fabrication process. The DOE could be simply stacked on the scanner and thus the submodule size of the scanner could be managed within 7 mm x 1 mm x 1 mm. We also discussed its integrability with a tunable seed laser and its application in 2D beam scanning for better signal to noise ratios.