Ferroelectric-liquid-crystal/silicon-integrated-circuit spatial light modulator

Abstract

We present the design and characterization of a spatial light modulator (SLM) comprising a ferroelectric-liquid-crystal light-modulating layer on top of a silicon integrated circuit. Our SLM consists of two electrically addressed arrays on the same integrated-circuit die. The first, a 1 x 128 linear array with a 20-microm center-to-center element spacing, used shift register addressing, while the second, a 64 x 64 square array with 60-microm pitch, used static random access memory addressing. The resulting SLM could be addressed at frame rates of up to 4.5 kHz and gave singleelement intensity contrast ratios of 12:1.