Ultra-thin multilayer nanomembranes for short wavelength deformable optics

Due to their unique optical properties, deformable multilayer membranes are of interest for adaptive optics. In this paper, we present the fabrication and characterization of a deformable membrane with nanometer scale thickness. This work explores the creation of adaptive optics out of multilayer thin films deposited using atomic layer deposition (ALD). SOIMUMPs, ALD, flip-chip assembly, and xenon difluoride (XeF/sub 2/) etching are used in the fabrication process. An assembled device is presented along with an electro-static characterization and interferograms to examine the deformable nature of the membrane surface. To our knowledge these are the first microstructures created with the ALD technique.