Friday July 1, 2005
Tuesday July 5, 2005

"Two-axis Electromagnetic Microscanner for High Resolution Displays"
Dr. Arda D Yalcinkaya
Koc University

A novel Microelectromechanical System (MEMS) actuation technique is developed for retinal scanning display and imaging applications allowing effective drive of a two-axes scanning mirror to wide angles at high frequency. Modelling of the device in mechanical and electrical domains, as well as the experimental characterization is described. This actuation technique delivers sufficient torque to allow non-resonant operation as low as DC in the slow-scan axis while at the same time allowing one-atmosphere operation even at fast-scan axis frequencies large enough to support SXGA (1280X1024) resolutions. High performance MEMS based display design is a very challenging work. The scanner represents the system's limiting aperture, requiring a sufficient size. Besides, the mirror flatness of fractions of a wavelength has to be realized so as to not distort the beam's wave front. The scan frequency has to be high enough to handle the many millions of pixels per second. Two-axis scan over significant angles has to be performed in order to paint a wide angle, two-dimensional image. Using the presented new actuation method, MEMS scanner designs have been implemented satisfying the requirements of a variety of display and imaging applications.