Testing and characterization of deformable mirrors

Deformable mirrors are at the heart of any adaptive optics system. We present the results of tests of deformable mirrors from Microscale. One of the key innovations of these deformable mirrors is that the facesheet is created from a silicon on insulator (SOI) wafer with integral posts for mechanical linkage to the actuators. This dramat- ically reduces the variability of the influence function. The facesheet is bonded to an array of piezoelectric stack actuators. The actuators are currently PZT, but single crystal PMN actuators are being developed. We present results of optical and electrical tests of the performance of the DM.