Abstract
The bender-bimorph beam steerer is a piezoelectrically driven optical device capable of pointing a light beam of several centimeters diameter anywhere in a several degree wide field of view with a control bandwidth of several hundred hertz. Its operation depends on the mechanical motion of a piezoelectric bender-bimorph to tilt a mirror, which in turn deflects the light beam. Fundamental relationships governing the operation of such a device constrain the product of mirror diameter, scan amplitude, and control bandwidth so that optimization of a bender-bimorph beam steerer system is a matter of trade-off considerations. A theoretical analysis of bender-bimorph performance is carried out. Expressions are derived for the resonant frequency of a loaded bimorph and its deflection. Graphs of these expressions are presented with several parameters treated as variables. For the numerical calculations, a very light beryllium mirror the same width as the bimorph is assumed. Some experimental data were collected and compared with the predicted performance (i.e., resonant frequency and deflection). The comparison verified the theoretical expressions.
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