Abstract

A new class of optically addressed spatial light modulators (SLMs) based on complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) very-large-scale integration (VLSI) CMOS VLSI and liquid-crystal technology is discussed. The SLMs consist of a liquid-crystal modulator on a CMOS VLSI backplane containing photodetectors and analog electronics. In this manner, by combining the flexibility of semiconductor electronics and the parallelism of liquid-crystal modulator, SLMs can be designed to perform a wider variety of computational functions. New optoelectronic computing architectures are possible by providing a tighter coupling between the electronic and the optical processing.

© 1990 Optical Society of America