Steerable Electro-Evanescent Optical Refractor (SEEOR) (IMAGE)
Caption
To date, beam steering has typically relied on mechanical devices, such as gimbal-mounted mirrors or rotating Risley prisms, which have inherent issues, including large size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements, slow scan rates, high repair and replacement costs, and short lifetimes before mechanical failure. Steerable electro-evanescent optical refractor (SEEOR) chips take laser light in the mid-wavelength infrared (MWIR) as an input and steers the beam at the output in two dimensions without the need for mechanical devices. SEEORs are meant to replace traditional mechanical beam steerers with much smaller, lighter, faster devices that use miniscule amounts of electrical power and have long lifetimes because they have no moving parts.
Credit
(Jason Myers/U.S. Naval Research Laboratory)
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