Patent ID: 7629555

Claim:
A method for delivering energy to a substrate, comprising: providing a beam of radiation defined by pulses of radiant energy, said pulses of radiant energy being separated from each other in time by a temporal pulse separation; at a first element, splitting said beam into a selectable number of sub-beams and propagating each of said sub-beams in an independently selectable direction; changing at least one of a number of said sub-beams and directions of said sub-beams within a reconfiguration time duration period which is shorter than said temporal pulse separation; at a second element, comprising a plurality of beam steering elements wherein a number of beam steering elements is greater than a maximum number of said sub-beams and wherein each beam steering element comprises a reflector mounted on at least one selectably tilting actuator, receiving said sub-beams and directing said sub-beams to independently selectable locations on said substrate; and while said sub-beams is received at a first collection of said plurality of beam steering elements, simultaneously repositioning a second collection of said beam steering elements, wherein said repositioning occurs during a redirection time period which is greater than said temporal pulse separation.