This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 9047, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, Introduction, and Conference Committee listing.

We demonstrate femtosecond pulses evolution in silicon photonic nano-wire waveguides with generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation modeling along with auxiliary carrier dynamics. The temporal and spectral properties of the output pulses are simulated with increasing input pulse energies, and high-order soliton pulse compression and splitting, along with spectral broadening and red-shift are observed remarkably. The impacts of high-order nonlinear effects, including the self-steepening and intrapulse Raman scattering on the pulse evolution are analyzed, and it indicates that the IRC results in noticeable temporal tailing edge tilting and spectral red-shift, while the impact of the self-steeping can be negligible. The contributions of the third order dispersion and various nonlinear effects on the pulse properties are detailedly investigated to better understand the femtosecond pulses propagation, in support of further chip-scale optical interconnects and signal processing.

We demonstrate surface plasmon (SP) excitation in Ag nanowires directly coupled with a microfiber in the presence of a MgF₂ substrate. With scanning near-field optical microscopy, evident light output from the Ag nanowire and the evanescent field of the coupling structure are observed in the near-field optical image. The tip enhancement of a Ag nanowire is also analyzed from the optical intensity graph. Results presented in this work suggest a simple SP excitation approach for plasmonic and photonic circuits with high compactness.

It is generally believed that scaling the lattice constant is a basic method to achieve a frequency response due to the sub-wavelength feature of metamaterials (MMs). In this paper, an alternative MMs design method by changing the line width to configure resonance is proposed. Three planar arrays of electric-field-coupled (ELC) MMs with the line width of 3μm, 4.5μm and 6μm for the THz frequency responses have been designed and fabricated, and their characteristics are investigated both by simulations and experiments. Measurement results show that the ELC resonators show strong couplings at the target frequency and an evident blue shift is obtained as the line width increased. An ELC resonator with the resonance of 1.3THz is also simulated by increasing the line width to 12μm, which has altered 160% compared with that of the 1μm line width ELC. The blue shift feature can also be applied in other MM structures for the microwave, infrared and optical frequencies.

In this paper, the influence of terminal layers on the characters of transmission and power flux in metal-dielectric multilayer metamaterial (MDMM) has been systematically investigated. Calculation results demonstrate that optical propagation and optical sigularity in multilayer structure are very sensitive to the thickness and materials of terminal layers. In addition, we find the termination will greatly affect the propagation performance in form of singularities of energy flux in MDMM and 100% visibility in superresolution process is always characterized by the appearance of the singularities (saddle point) in imaging space. Our research will be helpful to actively engineer the energy flux in nanostructures, especially in real time superresolution imaging, solar cell, nanolithography, etc.

Al-doped ZnO thin film (AZO) is regarded as a potential candidate to replace the expensive ITO thin film and is the central issue in current research in the field of transparent conductive film because of its properties of high conductivity, low level of pollution, high transmittanceand and low fabrication cost. In this paper, c-axis preferred growth AZO films were fabricated on sapphire (0001) substrate by the pulsed laser deposition at different substrate temperatures (Ts). The scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and the four-point probe (FPP) were used to measure the thin film microstructure and electrical characteristics. SEM results show that the surfaces of all AZO films are very flat and have no droplets on them, expect the film grown at room temperature. The grain sizes of AZO gradually decrease with increse of T_s. X-ray diffraction spectra show that the quality of the crystallization of thin films gradually is improved with increase of T_s. The results measured by FPP show that with increase of temperature, sheet resistance first decreases then increases.

The single crystalline Si target with high resistivity was ablated by a XeCl excimer laser (wavelength 308nm) in pure Ar gas under the ambient pressure of 10 Pa. The mask with a 1-10 mm diameter hole in the center was placed at a distance of 1.5 cm to the Si target. The Si nanocrystalline films were systemically deposited on a glass or single crystalline Si substrate placed behind the mask parallelly with a distance of 1.0 cm. The Raman and X-ray diffraction spectra indicate that the films were nanocrystalline. Scanning electron microscope images of the films showed that the diameter of the hole affected on the quantity and distributed range of Si nanoparticles on the substrate. It was obtained that the average size of Si nanoparticles decreasing with the diameter of the hole increasing, the quantity of Si nanoparticles was proportional to the power of 1.5 of the hole diameter. It is the nonlinear dynamic process to lead to the experimental result.

Recently, hybrid integration of multifunctional micro-components for creating complex, intelligent micro/nano systems has attracted significant attention. These micro-/nano-systems have important applications in a variety of areas, such as healthcare, environment, communication, national security, and so on. However, fabrication of micro/nano systems incorporated with different functions is still a challenging task, which generally requires fabrication of discrete microcomponents beforehand followed by assembly and packaging procedures. Furthermore, current micro-/nano-fabrication techniques are mainly based on the well-established planar lithographic approach, which suffer from severe issues in producing three dimensional (3D) structures with complex geometries and arbitrary configurations. In recent years, the rapid development of femtosecond laser machining technology has enabled 3D direct fabrication and integration of multifunctional components, such as microfluidics, microoptics, micromechanics, microelectronics, etc., into single substrates. In this invited talk, we present our recent progress in this active area. Particularly, we focus on fabrication of 3D micro- and nanofluidic devices and 3D high-Q microcavities in glass substrates by femtosecond laser direct writing.

Silicon photonic integrated devices and circuits have offered a promising means to revolutionalize information processing and computing technologies. One important reason is that these devices are compatible with conventional complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) processing technology that overwhelms current microelectronics industry. Yet, the dream to build optical computers has yet to come without the breakthrough of several key elements including optical diodes, isolators, and logic gates with low power, high signal contrast, and large bandwidth. Photonic crystal has a great power to mold the flow of light in micrometer/nanometer scale and is a promising platform for optical integration. In this paper we present our recent efforts of design, fabrication, and characterization of ultracompact, linear, passive on-chip optical diodes, isolators and logic gates based on silicon two-dimensional photonic crystal slabs. Both simulation and experiment results show high performance of these novel designed devices. These linear and passive silicon devices have the unique properties of small fingerprint, low power request, large bandwidth, fast response speed, easy for fabrication, and being compatible with COMS technology. Further improving their performance would open up a road towards photonic logics and optical computing and help to construct nanophotonic on-chip processor architectures for future optical computers.

In this work, a textured surface structure of Si substrate has been prepared using pyramid structure ZnO glass as mask, and the structure of textured surface and reflection characteristics of Si substrate have been analyzed by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and reflectivity spectra. The results show that U-shaped structure is formed on the surface of photoresist after the incidence of ultraviolet light, and it is caused by the different decrement of light intensity in the ZnO glass Mask Blank. The U-shaped structure which is same with the photoresist appears at the surface of Si substrate after reactive ion etching (RIE) process, and the size of U-shaped structure is in the range of 0.5-1.5 μm. Needle-like morphology caused by the RIE process appears on the U-shaped structure. The reflectivity of the U-shaped Si surface is decreased by the needle-like morphology, and it is protected by the U-shaped structure. The textured structure etched at different pressure is further investigated, and the results suggest that the reflectance of the sample reduces firstly and then increases with the decrease of pressure, and a minimal average reflectance is obtained at 0.8 Pa. The ion damage of Si surface is reduced in the second texturing process, which is useful for film deposition. The results suggest that low reflectance and textured surface of Si substrate can be obtained by ZnO glass mask blank with natural pyramid structure, which is meaningful for light trapping in solar cells.

We present a novel technology to dynamically control the wave front of the terahertz (THz) beam with photo-generated carriers. The computer generated hologram is projected onto a silicon wafer by a conventional optical spatial light modulator. The photo-generated carriers on the silicon surface will from a hologram to modulate the wave front of the input THz beam. Some special field distributions and vortex beams are generated using this method. This technology is broadband, structure free, tunable, and all-optical controllable. It will provide numerous possible applications in future THz imaging and communication systems.

The Offner-like spectrometer, one most widely used hyperspectral imaging spectrometers, offers some advantages over other spectrometers used in pushbroom imaging spectrometry: low chromatic aberrations, a compact size with low optical distortion, and large numerical aperture. The standard Offner spectrometer is made of three spherical concentric elements-- two concave mirrors and one convex grating. Convex grating is the core part of Offner type hyper-spectral imager. Considering the difficulties in fabrication of small angles convex gratings by traditional ways, we propose a new method. The ion-beam-etching holographic grating is adopted to obtain the convex blazed gratings with blazed angle of 4°--5°, whose angle can be further reduced by dipping or spinning coating with hardenable liquids. A highly reproducible blaze angle reduction to as high as a factor of 3 is achieved by controlling the spinning speed and viscosity of solution. The precise control of the blaze angles and groove profiles will be further studied focusing on the designing of rotate dip equipment and optimization of pulling speed and viscosity of solution.

A high coupling efficiency silicon grating which serves both as a high extinction ratio polarization beam splitter and a vertical coupler for silicon photonic circuits at the wavelength of 1550nm is presented. The design is based on the Bragg diffraction condition and the phase matching equation by using the rigorous coupled wave analysis (RCWA). For TE-polarized light, the computing coupling efficiency is as high as 69%, and the extinction ratio can reach - 20dB. The efficiency of TM-polarized wave is better than 53% and the extinction ratio is approximately -11dB. The device has compact structure, high TE to TM extinction ratio, low excess loss and wide operation bandwidth. Moreover, the simple fabrication method involves only single etch step and good compatibility with complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology.

Photoluminescence properties of Eu-doped ZnO grown by radio frequency magnetron sputtering technique are investigated. Under the UV light excitation, Eu³⁺-related red emissions are observed, which reveals that an energy transfer exists from the ZnO host to the Eu³⁺ ions. By carrying out temperature dependent behavior of the time-resolved photoluminescence, we confirm the lifetime is likely associated with transitions including both temperature insensitive radiative decay and temperature sensitive non-radiative decay mechanisms. So a rate-equation model is used to analyze the population dynamics and the transitions between different states and decay constants for the relaxation processes are obtained. The study suggests that the energy transfer efficiency from the ZnO host to the Eu³⁺ ions is reduced above 80 K.

A holographic dual-blazed grating with the period of 833 nm at ultraviolet-visible-near infrared was designed. To achieve higher and uniform diffraction efficiency, the grating profile was optimized by using rigorous coupled-wave analysis. The results show: when the two blaze angles of the dual-blazed grating, one within the range from 10 degree to 12 degree and the other one within the range from 26 degree to 32 degree respectively, the first-order diffraction efficiency is more than 30 percent within the wavelength from 0.25μm to 1μm. The holographic dual-blazed grating, one half with the blaze angle of 11 degree and the anti-blaze angle of 72 degree; and the other half with the blaze angle of 29 degree and the anti-blaze angle of 56 degree respectively, have been fabricated by improved holographic ion beam etching.

In order to improve the color saturation of reflective Fabry-Perot(FP) color filter, we proposed a reflective color filter incorporating FP resonator with a dielectric grating. The FP resonator consists of high reflection metal film, dielectric film and semi-transparent metal film. The dielectric grating, above the semi-transparent metal film, can reduce the reflection from the semi-transparent film in which case high saturation will be achieved. By using Finite Difference Time Domain(FDTD) method, the reflection spectra characteristic is analyzed as a function of duty cycle, period, refractive index and thickness of the dielectric grating. Based on the simulation results, a high performance color filter is proposed by optimizing the structural parameters. The full width at half-maximum (FWHM) reflection spectrum of the filters are reduced from 100 nm to 70 nm and the peak reflection efficiency of the filters are about 90%. The overlap of the tricolor output spectra decreases effectively, which will increase the color saturation of the color filter.

Two-dimensional coupled wave theory is used to calculate spatial dispersion of the diffraction pulse through volume Bragg grating (VBG). Results indicate that the spatial dispersion, which describes the spatial chirp and reflects globally how far different frequency components separate, is influenced by the grating parameters, wavelength and the propagation distance. To two ultrashort pulses with different durations (100fs, 20fs), the degree of spatial broadening through the VBG and the propagation process is both presented. The approach provides a theoretical foundation to design proper volume Bragg gratings for redressing the spatial chirp in the ultrashort-pulse laser system.

In order to increase the fill factor of small size micro-bolometer, double layer micro-bolometer was designed in this paper with bottom sensitive/ top absorber structure. The deformation and residual stress characters of single layer and double layer structure models were simulated and optimized, and with the optimized results, double layer structure micro-bolometer was fabricated with multifarious semiconductor recipes. The surface image and deformation information of the fabricated micro-bolometer was tested. By using double layer structure, the area of membrane increases by a factor of 1.99 and 3.6 for the “L” shape leg structure and long “S” shape structure, respectively.

When periodic structures are illuminated by a monochromatic continuous light source, the exact images of themselves at certain distances can be observed in the Fresnel diffraction region, and this is the so-called Talbot effect. The Talbot effect has attracted more and more attention because of its wide ranging applications in fields which include optical measurement, optical array illumination, and optical interconnections. Following the rapid development in the techniques of ultrashort laser, therefore, it is necessary to study behaviors of the Talbot effect under ultrashort laser pulses illumination. In this paper, the Talbot effect under illuminated by ultrashort laser pulses with complex spectral distribution has been studied. By using a Michelson interferometer, ultrashort laser pulses with complex spectral distribution can be generated based on the spectral interference of ultrashort laser pulses. In experiments, the Talbot images of a grating under illuminated by ultrashort laser pulses with different complex spectral distributions are obtained. Experimental results are in good agreement with the theoretical analysis. We believed that the behaviors of the Talbot effect should have potential applications in optical measurement.

Patterning of AlCu alloy thin films is a key technology in MEMS fabrication. In this paper, reactive ion etching (RIE) process of Al-1%Cu films was described using BCl₃ and Cl₂ as etching gases and N₂ and CH₄ as neutral gases. A four-step process was presented to meet the etching requirements using BCl₃, Cl₂, N₂ and CF₄ as process gases. Optical emission spectroscopy (OES) was used to monitor the state of the plasma in real time. The etching endpoint was detected by detecting the spectral intensity change in the wavelength range of 395 ~ 400nm.