A Liquid Ciystal on Silicon (LCoS) Spatial Light Modulator device was fabricated into an IR Scene Projector Concept Demonstrator for MWIR Hardware-in-the-loop Testing. Presently on-going in-house efforts are establishing performance benchmarks that rival many of the capabilities of the alternative, and presently the high end performance standard device, the suspended-bridge resistor array. New adaptations, like incorporating Ferro-electric Liquid Crystal (FELC) can achieve improved IR performance values breaking through the "slow" settling time limit exhibited by earlier Liquid Crystal based systems. In fact, specific parameters may even exceed some of the resistor array parameter's performance values (such as apparent thermal rise time allowing an overall faster frame rate). In addition, the relatively simple CMOS fabrication for the basic chip and ease of system "customization" allows system fabrication cost to be more on the order of the economical low end performance Digital Mirror Devices for the Infrared waveband; but still keeps the analog controlled thermal gradient in a single switch time to accommodate fast integrating sensors of modern seeker systems. Our research is using a 512x512 array originally intended for visible applications, but tailored for the MWIR operational regime. A new CMOS fabrication run to incorporate additional features and achieve further performance benefits is planned, but the existing product capability is adequate for most HIL simulation requirements. The measured performance of our in-house prototype device using FELC will be discussed.
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