Electrooptic wafer beam deflector in LiTaO/sub 3/

A novel electrooptic beam deflector is reported based on ferroelectric domain inversion extending through the thickness of a Z-cut LiTaO/sub 3/ wafer. The selective domain inversion is achieved by electric-field poling assisted by proton exchange, rather than proton exchange followed by rapid thermal annealing. The deflection sensitivity of the device was measured to be 5.0 mrad/KV. This is 93% of the theoretical value for this geometry, and a significant improvement over the value of 80% of theoretical previously reported for a waveguide deflector. This improvement is attributed to the new domain inversion process. No degradation of deflection sensitivity is observed up to the frequency of 300 KHz, which is then limited by the response time of detectors.