Digital micromirror device for optical scanning applications

Abstract

Recent mechanical and nonmechanical optical scanning devices do not meet the fast scanning requirements for contemporary and emerging applications and can only steer optical beams over relatively narrow angles. A variety of important applications require fast optical scanning devices that can steer laser beams rapidly to an arbitrary location and with no moving parts. We introduce a new optical scanning technique that can be used to collimate and steer optical beams for precision alignment in either 2-D free-space optical (FSO) communications links or image scanners. This nonmechanical technique is capable of rapidly redirecting the optical beams to arbitrary locations without greatly sacrificing other parameters such as aperture size, efficiency, and scanning range. A digital micromirror device (DMD) beam-steering system was successfully demonstrated and exhibited better performance results when compared with other available systems.