Development Of Optical Phase Modulator Based On Dielectric Elastomer And Performance Analysis

Optical phase modulation is widely used in many fields,such as optical communication,optical signal processing,synthetic aperture imaging,microwave signal processing and so on.In this paper,a new type of optical phase modulator is designed and manufactured using dielectric elastomer materials.The phase modulator drives the deformation of the dielectric elastic body through voltage to achieve the purpose of adjusting the phase.The phase of the phase modulator is detected by the phase detection platform,and then the phase change is analyzed using digital image processing technology and fringe marking method.The phase modulation accuracy of the final prepared optical phase modulator can reach 1/35λ.The main content of this article is as follows:(1)The research background and significance are explained,the optical phase modulator is classified from the physical state,and the research status of solid optical phase modulator and dielectric elastomer materials are reviewed.Briefly introduce the principle of phase detection and related theories of dielectric elastomers.According to the driving principle of the dielectric elastomer,a new type of optical phase modulator is designed and manufactured.The working mode of the phase modulator is: under the action of an electric field,the deformation of the light-passing area is driven by the deformation of the electrode area,and the phase adjustment is realized by using the deformation of the light-passing area.(2)Using a dielectric elastomer with a fixed pre-stretching ratio,round-hole phase modulators with different initial apertures were fabricated.Use the optical phase detection platform to collect the fringe change information of the phase modulator,and process and analyze the collected information through digital image processing technology and fringe marking method to obtain the relationship between the phase and voltage change of the round hole phase modulator with different initial apertures.Take the dielectric elastomer 3×3 times pre-stretched round hole phase modulator with an initial aperture of 10 mm as an example.When the voltage is increased from 0V to 4000 V,the adjustable phase is 28π,and the phase modulation accuracy can reach 1/35λ.Through experiments,the effect of the initial aperture size on the performance of the round hole phase modulator is analyzed: when the dielectric elastomer pre-stretching ratio is the same,the smaller the initial aperture of the round hole phase modulator,the stronger its phase modulation ability.(3)Taking the rectangular phase modulator as the research object,the phase modulating ability of the rectangular phase modulator of different specifications was tested.Among them,a rectangular phase modulator with a dielectric elastomer 3×3 times pre-stretched and an initial window width of 10 mm was used in When the voltage is increased from 0V to 4000 V,the adjustable phase is 22π,and the phase modulation accuracy has reached 1/35λ.Through experiments,the effects of the dielectric elastomer pre-stretching ratio and the initial window width on the performance of the rectangular phase modulator are studied separately: when the dielectric elastomer pre-stretching ratio is the same,the initial window width w of the rectangular phase modulator is smaller,and The stronger the phase modulation ability;the larger the pre-stretching multiple of the dielectric elastomer of the rectangular phase modulator with the same initial window width,the stronger the phase modulation ability.