Nick Rosielle

Design and calibration of a parallel-moving displacement generator for nano-metrology

A displacement generator is realized which enables the calibration of a wide variety of displacement-measuring probes, such as probes of roundness testers, roughness testers and stand-alone type scanning probe microscopes (SPMs), in the range of with a standard uncertainty below 1 nm. A digital piezo translator (DPT) drives a flat mirror which serves as the calibration platform. This mirror is locked to an elastic, hysteresis-free, monolithic parallel guide. Calibration of the platform displacement is carried out by various methods including tunable and stabilized lasers, Fabry-Perot interferometry and laser interferometry. The system is calibrated with a standard uncertainty of about 0.1 nm using three independent methods. As an example the calibration of an SPM using generated steps is shown.

Design of a minimally invasive surgical teleoperated master-slave system with haptic feedback

Conventional Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) is performed with long and slender camera and instruments through at least three small incisions. However, it generally provides the surgeon with an uncomfortable body posture, limited force feedback and unnatural eye-hand-coordination. A master-slave system with force feedback is being developed, since such a system can overcome the inconveniences of MIS. This paper is about the design of the master and the slave.

Validation of a new adaptive deformable mirror concept

A new prototype adaptive deformable mirror for future AO-systems is presented that consists of a thin continuous membrane on which push-pull actuators impose out-of-plane displacements. Each actuator has ±10μm stroke, nanometer resolution and only mWs heat dissipation. The mirrors modular design makes the mechanics, electronics and control system extendable towards large numbers of actuators. Models of the mirror are derived that are validated using influence and transfer function measurements. First results of a prototype with 427 actuators are also presented.

Distributed control in adaptive optics : Deformable mirror and turbulence modeling

Future large optical telescopes require adaptive optics (AO) systems whose deformable mirrors (DM) have ever more degrees of freedom. This paper describes advances that are made in a project aimed to design a new AO system that is extendible to meet tomorrows specifications. Advances on the mechanical design are reported in a companion paper [6272-75], whereas this paper discusses the controller design aspects. The numerical complexity of controller designs often used for AO scales with the fourth power in the diameter of the telescopes primary mirror. For future large telescopes this will undoubtedly become a critical aspect. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of solving this issue with a distributed controller design. A distributed framework will be introduced in which each actuator has a separate processor that can communicate with a few direct neighbors. First, the DM will be modeled and shown to be compatible with the framework. Then, adaptive turbulence models that fit the framework will be shown to adequately capture the spatio-temporal behavior of the atmospheric disturbance, constituting a first step towards a distributed optimal control. Finally, the wavefront reconstruction step is fitted into the distributed framework such that the computational complexity for each processor increases only linearly with the telescope diameter.

Large adaptive deformable membrane mirror with high actuator density

With the future growing size of telescopes, new, high-resolution, affordable wavefront corrector technology with low power dissipation is needed. A new adaptive deformable mirror concept is presented, to meet such requirements. The adaptive mirror consists of a thin (30-50 μm), highly reflective, deformable membrane. An actuator grid with thousands of actuators is designed which push and pull at the membrane’s surface, free from pinning and piston effects. The membrane and the actuator grid are supported by an optimized light and stiff honeycomb sandwich structure. This mechanically stable and thermally insensitive support structure provides a stiff reference plane for the actuators. The design is extendable up to several hundreds of mms. Low-voltage electro-magnetic actuators have been designed. These highly linear actuators can provide a stroke of 15 micrometers. The design allows for a stroke difference between adjacent actuators larger than 1 micron. The actuator grid has a layer-based design; these layers extend over a large numbers of actuators. The current actuator design allows for actuator pitches of 3 mm or more. Actuation is free from play, friction and mechanical hysteresis and therefore has a high positioning resolution and is highly repeatable. The lowest mechanical resonance frequency is in the range of kHz so a high control bandwidth can be achieved. The power dissipation in the actuator grid is in the order of milliwatts per actuator. Because of this low power dissipation active cooling is not required. A first prototype is currently being developed. Prototypes will be developed with increasing number of actuators.

Large adaptive deformable mirror: design and first prototypes

The first prototype of an actuator for a new adaptive deformable mirror (DM) is presented together with the development of a 61-actuator grid element. The DM design consists of a thin membrane which acts as the correcting element. A grid of low voltage electro-magnetical push-pull actuators, impose out-of-plane displacements in the mirrors membrane. To provide a stable and stiff reference plane for the actuators, a mechanically stable and thermally decoupled honeycomb support structure is added. Several variants of variable reluctance actuators are considered. Each actuator consists of a closed magnetic circuit in which a strong permanent magnet (PM) provides a static magnetic force attracting ferromagnetic material. By applying a current through a coil which is situated around this magnet, this force can be influenced. Depending on the mechanical stiffness of the actuator, this leads to a certain displacement. Both the PM and the coil are connected to the fixed world and only the ferromagnetic material will move. The actuators are produced in arrays which make the design easy and extendable. The power dissipation in the actuator grid is in the order of milliwatts per actuator. Because of this low power dissipation active cooling is not required. The paper describes how the actuator stiffness and efficiency can be controlled. A test-setup is developed in which the actuator characteristics are measured.

Large adaptive deformable membrane mirror with high actuator density: design and first prototypes

A large adaptive deformable mirror with high actuator density is presented. The DM consists of a thin continuous membrane which acts as the correcting element. A grid of low voltage electro-magnetical push-pull actuators, - located in an actuator plate -, impose out-of-plane displacements in the mirrors membrane. To provide a stable and stiff reference plane for the actuators, a mechanically stable and thermally decoupled honeycomb support structure is added. The design is suited for mirrors up to several hundred mm with an actuator pitch of a few mm. One of the key elements in the design is the actuator grid. Each actuator consists of a closed magnetic circuit in which a strong permanent magnet (PM) attracts a ferromagnetic core. Movement of this core is provided by a low stiffness elastic guiding. A coil surrounds the PM. Both the coil and the PM are connected to the fixed world. By applying a current through the coil, the magnetic force acting on the core can be influenced. This force variation will lead to translation of the ferromagnetic core. This movement is transferred to the reflective mirror surface in a piston-free manner. The design allows for a long total stroke and a large inter actuator stroke. The actuators are produced in arrays which make the design modular and easily extendable. The first actuators and an actuator grid are produced and tested in a dedicated test set-up. This paper describes how relevant actuator properties, such as stiffness and efficiency, can be influenced by the design. The power dissipation in the actuator grid is optimized to a few milliwatts per actuator, thereby avoiding active cooling.

Nanometer level freeform surface measurements with the NANOMEFOS non-contact measurement machine

Applying aspherical and freeform optics in high-end optical systems can improve system performance while decreasing the system mass, size and number of required components. The NANOMEFOS measurement machine is capable of universal non-contact and fast measurement of aspherical and freeform optics up to ∅500 mm, with an uncertainty of 30 nm (2σ). In this machine, the surface is placed on a continuously rotating air bearing spindle, while a specially developed optical probe is positioned over it by a motion system. A separate metrology system measures the probe and product position relative to a metrology frame. The prototype realization, including custom electronics and software, has been completed. The noise level at standstill is 0.88 nm rms. A reference flat was measured with 13 μm and 0.73 mm tilt. Both measurements show an rms flatness of about 8 nm rms, which correspond to the NMi measurement. A hemisphere has also been measured up to 50° slope, and placed 0.2 mm eccentric on the spindle. These measurements reproduce to about 5 nm rms. Calibration and software are currently being improved and the machine is applied in TNO aspherical and freeform optics production.

Actuator tests for a large deformable membrane mirror

In the design of a large adaptive deformable membrane mirror, variable reluctance actuators are used. These consist of a closed magnetic circuit in which a strong permanent magnet provides a static magnetic force on a ferromagnetic core which is suspended in a membrane. By applying a current through the coil which is situated around the magnet, this force is influenced, providing movement of the ferromagnetic core. This movement is transferred via a rod imposing the out-of-plane displacements in the reflective deformable membrane. In the actuator design a match is made between the negative stiffness of the magnet and the positive stiffness of the membrane suspension. If the locality of the influence functions, mirror modes as well as force and power dissipation are taken into account, a resonance frequency of 1500 Hz and an overall stiffness of 1000 N/m for the actuators is needed. The actuators are fabricated and the dynamic response tested in a dedicated setup. The Bode diagram shows a first eigenfrequency of 950 Hz. This is due to a lower magnetic force than expected. A Helmholtz coil setup was designed to measure the differences in a large set of permanent magnets. With the same setup the 2nd quadrant of the B-H curve is reconstructed by stacking of the magnets and using the demagnetization factor. It is shown that the values for Hc and Br of the magnets are indeed lower than the values used for the initial design. New actuators, with increased magnet thickness, are designed and currently fabricated.

Design of a machine for the universal non-contact measurement of large free-form optics with 30 nm uncertainty

A new universal non-contact measurement machine design for measuring free-form optics with 30 nm expanded uncertainty is presented. In the cylindrical machine concept, an optical probe with 5 mm range is positioned over the surface by a motion system. Due to a 2nd order error effect when measuring smoothly curved surfaces, only 6 position measurement errors are critical (nanometer level). A separate metrology system directly measures these critical errors of the probe and the product relative to a metrology frame, circumventing most stage errors. An uncertainty estimation has been performed for the presented design, including a calibration uncertainty estimation and a dynamic analysis. Machine dynamics certainly cause relative motion between probe and product, but due to the non-contact nature of the measurement and the short metrology loop, these motions do not cause significant measurement errors. The resulting shape measurement error for aspheres up to medium free-forms is between 24 and 37 nm, and 30 - 85 nm for medium to heavily free-form surfaces. The suitability of the proposed design is herewith confirmed. A detailed design and a prototype of the machine are currently being developed.