Patent ID: 7626745

Claim:
A light modulator comprising a diffractive piezoelectric mirror, which in turn comprises: (a) a substrate; (b) an elongate piezoelectric mirror layer which is attached directly to the substrate at both ends thereof and supported by the substrate at a location relative to the substrate to define a space between the substrate and the piezoelectric mirror layer, said elongate piezoelectric mirror layer comprising a piezoelectric material layer movable relative to the substrate when voltage is applied to opposite sides of the piezoelectric material layer, thereby reflecting incident light and diffracting incident light; and (c) said piezoelectric mirror layer comprises: (i) a first electrode layer positioned on the substrate so at least a portion of the first electrode layer is spaced from the substrate; (ii) a plurality of piezoelectric material layers which are disposed in multiple layers on the first electrode layer in which, when a voltage is applied to the material layers, the voltage-applied layers shrink and expand so as to generate an actuating force; (iii) a plurality of second electrode layers which are disposed between the piezoelectric material layers to provide the piezoelectric voltage to the piezoelectric material layers; and (iv) an electrode and mirror layer which is disposed on the layer of the piezoelectric material layers farthest from the first electrode layer, said electrode and mirror layer providing the piezoelectric voltage to the piezoelectric material layers to shift the electrode and mirror layer relative to the substrate to diffract the incident light.