Single-Moving-Platform, Parallel-Kinematics Design: Equal Dynamics for all Axes, Better Linearity & Temperature Stability
This high bandwidth piezo-stack driven fast 2-axis Piezo Steering Mirror Mount (2D laser steering mirror) uses a differential tip-tilt drive for high-velocity motion with sub-microradian resolution. It comes in different max tilt angles and can provide 2D mechanical angles to 10 mrad with optical deflection angles to 20 mrad (>1°). Applications of the 2-axis mirror mount are beam switching, beam dithering, laser beam steering, laser cavity stabilization, image dithering and stabilization, optical canning, and cavity tuning. The S-330 tip/tilt platform can be equipped with gratings, optics and mirrors. The direct drive piezo stack actuators provide higher stiffness and faster response than amplified piezo actuators based on lever arm transmission. Due to the higher stiffness, the S-330 can provide higher bandwidth. For ultra-long lifetime the PI piezo mirror mounts are equipped PICMA® low-voltage piezo stacks that are ceramic encapsulated and have shown 100 billion cycles in testing for the Mars rover Space mission.
Closed Loop control with feedback sensors provides excellent repeatability and accuracy!
Computer Control / Software:
The fine steering mirrors can be computer controlled via a digital nanopositioning motion controller such as the E-727 multi-axis controller series. LabView drivers and MatLab examples are available for easy integration.
If Z motion is required, other PI focusing drives and phase shifters are available.
What is a Fast Fine Steering Mirror?
Fast fine steering mirror systems are used to direct light, or stabilize light, mostly laser beams. They can also directly stabilize an imaging sensor thus providing higher resolution, another way of operating them is in pixel shift mode, where sub-pixel resolution can be achieved which is important with high end sensors. Fast steering mirrors can be designed for rotation around 1 degree of freedom (tilt-axis) or in two-axis designs (2D mirror mounts). 3-Axis designs also provide piston mode (Z-motion) which can be useful for phase shifting and waveform correction.
Why Piezo Mirror Mounts?
Piezo actuators are very stiff, solid state motors that can provide faster reactions to an input signal than other types of motors, achieving rotation with very high-bandwidth in these mirror mounts, along with extremely high accuracy and sub-microradian resolution. Piezo steering mirror mounts can be designed in very compact OEM packages in a very rugged design, to be vacuum and space compatible. Most commercial applications are found in laser beam control, optical stabilization, laser tracking, laser pointing, image dithering and stabilization.
Piezo elements do not generate magnetic fields and are not influenced by them and tests at Fermi National Lab with PI PICMA® actuators have been conducted up to 5*10^8 Rad.
