A new approach for focusing deformable mirrors fabricated in polymer technology

Nowadays, adaptive optics are already being used in a broad range of applications. The growing market of applications demands for low-cost adaptive optics with high optical quality. Adaptive optics like deformable mirrors, fabricated using micro structure technologies, currently cost about 60 USD. In this work, a circular adaptive mirror device for laser focussing was developed and fabricated in polymer materials. The focal length can be varied within the range from 0.1 to 1 m. Besides the cost-efficient fabrication of the mirror device this concept also features only one actuator for focussing. The driving voltage of the actuator lies in the range of 0 to 12 V, depending on the focal length of the deformable mirror