| 摘要 |
<p>A piezoelectric diffraction grating steering device including a piezoelectric substrate having an attached or integrally formed diffraction grating. When an electric field is applied to the piezoelectric substrate, the piezoelectric actuator stretches the grating, changing the periodicity of the grating, thereby changing the angle of diffraction of the grating. The preferred grating is a high efficiency reflection type grating which diffracts a maximum amount of light into the first order mode, minimizing the amount of light in the zero order and higher order modes. The invention may be used in any application in which fine control over the angle of diffraction of a light beam is required, and may have an adjustment rate in excess of 100 KHz. One application is as a beam steering element in a free-space laser communication system.</p> |
