Novel Beam Steering for Infrared Countermeasure

"The traditional way of steering light is using turnable mirrors, prisms or other optical components by mechanical actuators. These are usually large, heavy and consume relatively high powers. Moreover, the rate/speed at which light can be modulated is slowcompared with today's demand on switching speeds and modulation frequencies. There is considerable value of adding non-mechanical steering of laser beams. Many military and civilian applications would benefit from the proposed devices to electronicallycontrol and switch light. Based on innovative material engineering, Agiltron Corporation proposes to develop a novel solid-state beam steering technology. Our approach has leading edge performance attributes which include large dynamic angular range of+-45o, high speed operation of sub-microsecond, little beam distortion and loss, high optical power handling, low power consumption, rugged to withstanding, and long operating life. Moreover, the design is simple, compact, light weight, and low cost. Itis anticipated that state-of-the-art performance in several key specifications can be achieved through this program. Prototype device will be fabricated to demonstrate functionality in Phase I. Applications for optical scanning products include laserimaging, DNA biochip analysis, laser vision correction, direct to plate printing and virtually hundreds of laser-based material processing applications (cutting, coding, drilling, marking, w