• 10 mm Clear Aperture
• Piezo Tripod Design Allows Z Motion and Tilt
• Up to 2.4 mrad Optical Beam Deflection
• Piston Movement up to 12 µm
• Closed-Loop Versions for Better Linearity
• For Optics, Mirrors or Other Components
• Zero Friction Guiding Mechanism
• Single-Moving-Platform, Parallel-Kinematics Design : Equal Dynamics for all Axes, Better Linearity & Temperature Stability

This Z-axis and tip/tilt piezo mirror mount and phase shifter family comes in many variations. Phase shifter versions with aperture are available as well as 3D Z-tip-tilt mounts for optics and mirrors, also with an aperture. It employs high-speed direct-drive piezo actuators for faster response and higher bandwidth. Closed Loop control with feedback sensors is available for excellent repeatability and accuracy! Applications of this fast, active optic 3-axis mirror mount are beam switching, beam dithering, laser beam control, laser cavity stabilization, image dithering and stabilization, optical canning, and cavity tuning. The tripod direct drive piezo stack actuators provide higher stiffness, bandwidth and faster response than amplified piezo actuators based on lever arm transmission. 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. If larger tip/tilt angles are required, the V-931 voice-coil driven, 2-axis laser steering mirror with is recommended.

Computer Control, Programming, 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. Tip/Tilt laser steering mirrors with larger angles are available with direct-drive voice-coil motors, for example the V-931 tip/tilt platform.



What is a Fast Steering Mirror (FSM)?

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. less