Micro-slits have been prepared with a slit-width and a slit- length of 2 ... 1000 micrometers . Linear and two-dimensional arrays up to 10 x 110 slits have been developed and completed with a piezo-actuator for shifting. This system is a so-called mechanical slit positioning system. The light is switched by simple one- or two-dimensional displacement of coded slit masks in a one- or two-layer architecture. The slit positioning system belongs to the transmissive class of MEMS-based spatial light modulators (SLM). It has fundamental advantages for optical contrast and also can be used in the full spectral region. Therefore transmissive versions of SLM should be a future solution. Instrument architectures based on the slit positioning system can increase the resolution by subpixel generation, the throughput by HADAMARD transform mode, or select objects for multi-object-spectroscopy. The linear slit positioning system was space qualified within an advanced micro- spectrometer. A NIR multi-object-spectrometer for the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) is based on a field selector for selecting objects. The field selector is a SLM, which could be implemented by a slit positioning system.
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