Linear Regulators for Efficiently Driving a Deformable Mirror

Linear regulators are widely used for providing stable voltage supplies. When a regulator provides a voltage signal to a capacitive device, the quiescent current can be designed in submicron amperes. This low quiescent current attribute will be employed to build low power high-voltage amplifiers and applied for developing two application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) in this proposal. Each ASIC contains 32x32 voltage supplies, featuring low static power while capable of driving a 32x32-actuator MEMS deformable mirror (DM) with voltage up to 300V at frame rate of 10 kHz, or a 32x32-actuator stacked PMN DM with voltage up to 100V. Each proposed voltage supply unit consumes low quiescent power that is at least one order of magnitude lower than currently available ASICs on the market for driving MEMS devices. Such low-power, high-voltage, kilo-channel ASICs are ideal devices for developing compact DMs with low power drivers for NASA's future space missions of exoplanet exploration.

PMN and MEMS DMs are the two main DMs that NASA is currently considering for its space missions. The proposed two kilo-channel ASICs are ideal devices for driving these DMs stably with low power. If developed successfully, the two ASICs will be good component candidates for NASA's potential space missions such as WFIRST, HabEx, and LUVOIR.

The ASIC for driving a MEMS DM is expected to enable DM vendors to produce compact kilo-actuator adaptive optics systems capable of precisely compensating for wavefront aberrations in optical systems, such as space- and ground-based telescopes, microscopy, retinal imaging, and optical communication.

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