The Grating Light Valve (GLV™) technology offers a unique combination of extremely fast switching speed and the ability to withstand very high optical power densities. These and other attributes enable a novel architecture based on a scanned linear array of GLV pixels, which is described here for the first time. This architecture provides a number of advantages over conventional projection display systems that are based on either 2-D spatial light modulators or scanned point systems. These advantages include scalability to very high spatial resolution, natural analog gamma response, high contrast and dynamic range, high optical efficiency, and low cost at production volumes.

The objective of this paper is to detail the Grating Light Valvemi (G1..vTNI) technology and demonstrate its flexibility in attaining high performance in a variety of optical systems and applications, concentrating particularly on its application toward projection display systems. The GLV technology represents a unique approach to light modulation and offers remarkable performance in terms of contrast, efficiency. switching speed, and cost. 'I'he electro-inechanical response of the GL\7 device can be tuned through various design and operational modes to deliver desired performance for a given application. The design and fabrication of a linear array module of 1,088 GI.V pixels is described. This module enables a Scanned Linear GLV Architecture for HDTV projection products. The flexibility of the GLV technology and the Scanned Linear GLV Architecture can support line sequential and frame sequential color, as well as 3-valve color systems. System level optical designs either include embedded scanners to emulate 2-D film source planes or external scanner elements for greater system simplicity. Results with actual projection display systems yield unparalleled on-screen performance, having uniformity greater than 99% corner-to-corner, high contrast, 10-bits of grayscale per color, and no visible pixel boundaries.

The Grating Light Valve GLV™ technology has been used in an innovative system architecture to create a high resolution projected image by optically scanning a linear array of GLV pixels. We will discuss optical and electrical techniques used to optimize the performance of this unique architecture in terms of overall image quality, uniformity and repeatability.

The Grating Light Valve (GLV) spatial light modulator is a unique and proven CMOS process-compatible optical MEMS device. The modulator employs a dynamically adjustable diffraction grating to manipulate an optical signal. Today, the GLV technology is successfully used in high-resolution display and imaging systems, where its high efficiency, large dynamic range, precise analog attenuation, fast switching speed, high reliability, high yield, and the ability to integrate thousands of channels into a single device are fundamental advantages. These same properties make the GLV device desirable for optical telecommunication applications. The optical properties, functionality, device design, and CMOS processing of the GLV will be presented. Challenges and solutions that arise from adapting the current GLV technology to optical telecommunications wavelengths will be discussed. Measured results will be presented that describe GLV performance parameters, including insertion loss, dynamic range, polarization dependent loss, and spectral attenuation accuracy.

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