| Industry | Deformable mirror Adaptive Optics MEMS |
|---|---|
| Founder(s) | Dr. Thomas Bifano Paul Bierden |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Area served | worldwide |
| Products | Customized MEMS products and standardized Deformable mirrors such as the Kilo-,Multi- and Mini-DM |
| Website | BostonMicromachines.com |
Boston Micromachines Corporation is a US company operating out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Boston Micromachines manufactures and develops MEMS deformable mirrors to perform open- and closed- loop adaptive optics. The technology is applied in Beam Shaping, Astronomy, Vision Science, and general Microscopy; any application in need of wavefront manipulation.
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Founded in 1999 by Dr. Thomas Bifano and Paul Bierden(CEO), Boston Micromachines is a provider of advanced MEMS-based mirror products for use in commercial adaptive optics systems. The company also performs research in optical MEMS fabrication.[1][2]
Boston Micromachines is funded in part by research programs and develops new products for astronomy, microscopy, pulse shaping, beam shaping, fiber coupling, space optics, retinal imaging and for defense purposes.[3]
Boston Micromachines’ deformable mirrors can be used in the following disciplines for image enhancement:
Boston Micromachines develops deformable mirrors for telescopes to correct for atmospheric disturbance, in the search for new planets and enhanced images[4]. A project currently taking advantage of BMC's mirror technology is the ViLLaGEs Project at the Lick Observatory.
Through the use of adaptive optics, deformable mirrors can be used to enhance Confocal techniques such as two-photon excitation fluorescence (2PEF), second- and/or third-Harmonic Generation (SHG/THG, respectively), Coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS), Scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (SLO), Optical coherence tomography (OCT) as well as conventional wide-field microscopy.[5] Of particular interest is that deformable mirrors increase the resolution of retinal[6] images to achieve ~2 µm resolution levels. Photoreceptor cells are around 3 µm in diameter. Without adaptive optics, resolution levels are in the 10-15 µm range. Research using other confocal techniques is currently taking place at such locations as the University of Durham[9], Harvard University[10] and Boston University[11].
Boston Micromachines deformable mirrors are capable of correcting for atmospheric distortion in long distance laser communication, and other pulse shaping applications.[7]
| Actuator Array | 6x6 | 12x12 | 32x32 |
| Actuator Stroke | 1.5-5.5 μm | 1.5 μm | |
| Actuator Pitch | 300-450 μm | 300-350 μm | |
| Aperture | 1.5 - 2.25 mm | 3.3 - 4.95 mm | 9.3 mm |
| Surface Type | Continuous or Segmented | ||
| Mirror Coating | Gold or aluminum | ||
| Average step size | sub nanometer | ||
| Hysteresis | none | ||
| Fill factor | 99% or more | ||
| Mechanical Response Time | 100μs or less (~3.5 kHz) | 20μs or less | |
| Surface Quality | less than 20 NanoMeters (RMS) | ||
| Driver Specifications | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Frame rate | 8 kHz (34 kHz bursts) | up to 60 kHz | |
| Resolution | 14 Bit | ||
| Driver Dimensions | 102 mm x 133 mm x 32 mm | 229 mm x 178 mm x 64 mm | 483 mm x 470 mm x 133 mm |
| Computer Interface | USB 2.0 | PCI card | |
Many project deliverables and deformable mirrors are customized for specific applications[8].