A high-speed electrostatic double-layered vibratory grating scanner with very high optical resolution

This paper demonstrates the design, fabrication and characterization of a micromachined electrostatic double-layered vibratory grating scanner for high speed, high optical resolution laser scanning applications. The prototype scanner with a 2mm diameter diffraction grating is capable of scanning a laser beam at around 21.591kHz with an optical scan angle of 33.5°, resulting a θ_opticalD product (product of optical scan angle and diameter of the diffraction grating) of 67 deg·mm. The optical resolution of the prototype scanner is measured to be 916 pixels per-unidirectional-scan while scanning in atmosphere. While scanning in vacuum condition, the optical resolution can be estimated to be 1460 pixels per-unidirectional-scan, which is suitable for SXGA (1280×1024) resolution scanned beam displays.