MEMS DM development at Iris AO, Inc.

Iris AO is actively developing piston-tip-tilt (PTT) segmented MEMS deformable mirrors (DM) and adaptive optics (AO) controllers for these DMs. This paper discusses ongoing research at Iris AO that has advanced the state-of-the-art of these devices and systems over the past year. Improvements made to open-loop operation and mirror fabrication enables mirrors to open-loop flatten to 4 nm rms. Additional testing of an anti snap-in technology was conducted and demonstrates that the technology can withstand 100 million snap-in events without failure. Deformable mirrors with dielectric coatings are shown that are capable of handling 630 W/cm(2) of incident laser power. Over a localized region on the segment, the dielectric coatings can withstand 100kW/cm(2) incident laser power for 30 minutes. Results from the first-ever batch of PTT489 DMs that were shipped to pilot customers are reported. Optimizations made to the open-loop PTT controller are shown to have latencies of 157.5 mu s and synchronous array update rates of nearly 6.5 kHz. Finally, plans for the design and fabrication of the next-generation PTT939 DM are presented.