Association of acousto-optic and microscanning mirrors for diffractive memory high-speed reading

We present an investigation that has been carried out on the design of a high speed scanning system for a data storage application. Polypeptide material is used to store data by the angular multiplexing process. This material presents many advantages compared with others. To address the optical memory, our set-up is composed of micro-scanning mirrors (MEMS) and an acousto-optic deflector (AOD). This association leads to an addressing set-up with a very good performance in terms of the access time and the angular bandwidth. Expermental tests made with micro-scanning mirrors (MEMS) of 3 x 3 mm2 are described. Problems fo synchronization between the different elements and the influences of MEMS deformation are also discussed.