In this paper, a concave holographic grating aberration optimization method is designed, which performs well in the aberration optimization of multi-channel narrow-band gratings. Taking the grating in the the project of CAFE (the Census of warm-hot intergalactic medium, Accretion, and Feedback Explorer) proposed by the Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, as the optimization target, this paper compares the method proposed with the traditional aberration function method and the spot diagram method commonly used currently in terms of the evaluation perspectives such as the line density deviation, the focusing curve offset, and the exit slit luminous flux, etc., and the optimization time is one thirtieth and one sixtieth of the two methods, respectively.
In this article, we designed and fabricated a high linear density concave variable line space holographic grating for the Lyman spectrometer, with level 3 working and the center line density is 3300line/mm. The focus curve is a circle with the grating vertex O as the center and a radius of 900 mm. We analyze the influence of the exposure error on the line density distribution and reduce the harm of errors through the method of multi-error compensation. To improve the diffraction efficiency, we use Finite Element Method software to get the best grating groove parameters. Finally, we initially prepared a holographic grating with a symmetrical arch groove with a groove depth of 175nm and a bottom duty cycle of 0.3.
As an essential component of the slitless spectrometer, the UV transmission blazed grating has the capability of high dispersion and high resolution. In this paper, a method for fabricating UV transmission blazed gratings by holography-ion beam etching is proposed. Holographic interference lithography is used to generate photoresist grating masks. The ion beam vertical etching transfers the photoresist mask pattern to the substrate to form a SiO2 grating mask. When the ion beam incident direction is at a certain angle to the normal direction of the substrate, the SiO2 mask is used to block the inclined ion beam, so that different parts of the mask bottom are bombarded by the ion beam with different fluxes, forming a blazing facet. When the mask is etched completely, the blazed grating is formed. Based on the idea of the line motion algorithm, the article establishes the geometric model of blazed grating etching, which provides the parameter guidance for precise control of the groove structure. Combined with the theoretical model, a UV transmission blazed grating with a line density of 333 lines/mm and a blazing angle of 13.2° is successfully fabricated.
We report on high-efficiency visible and near-infrared transmission gratings in fused silica generated by holographic recording and reactive ion beam etching technology. At a wavelength of 740 nm, near 100% diffraction efficiency is achieved under Littrow conditions. The design is based on the phenomenon of the high aspect ratio gratings by using the rigorous coupled wave analysis. A binary grating with the optimum grating period of 740 nm and groove depth of 1.55 had been fabricated in the paper. The grating wavelength bandwidth and angular bandwidth are extremely enhanced compared with conventional volume phase holographic gratings, making these gratings the key elements in high-resolution astronomical ground-based telescope spectrographs.
In this note, we present our results about the process design and characterization of deep reactive ion beam etching of high line density fused silica transmission gratings. Up to 1 μm deep and 1880 lines/mm microstructures have been successfully fabricated for 532nm ultrashort pulse laser pulse compression using the developed processes. Considering the requirements of the manufacturing process, a certain range of parameters needs to be determined to reduce the need for etching precision. Therefore, in this paper, the strict coupling wave method is used to determine the parameter range of the grating in the range of the calculated grating parameters, and the diffraction efficiency of the simplified mode method can be calculated. To our knowledge, this is the first note on the design parameters of transmission pulse compression grating made on fused quartz substrate are given using the simplified mode method to design and a non-ICP-based reactive ion etcher.
With the development of micro- & nanofabrication technology, micro- & nanostructures have been widely used in many fields, including spectroscopy, coding, sensor, subwavelength element, etc. With phase masks realized by a combination of electron beam lithography (EBL), near field lithography (NFH) has great potential to fabricate versatile nanostructures, because it combines the advantages of both lithographic methods. Currently, subwavelength structures attract much attention due to their various functions, such as antireflection, polarization beam splitter and filter. In this presentation, aiming at reducing the interface reflection of a fused silica mask of NFH at a wavelength of 441.6 nm and incidence angles of either 0° or 32°. First, we will compare the difference of antireflection property of one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) subwavelength structures with line density of 3600 lines/mm by simulation. Then, the optimized 1D and 2D subwavelength structures with 3600 lines/mm will be fabricated by using EBL-NFH method. Finally, the antireflection property of these 1D and 2D subwavelength structures will be characterized at the wavelength of 441.6 nm.
Soft x-ray varied line spacing grating (VLSG), which is a vital optical element for laser plasma diagnosis and spectrometry analysis, is conventionally fabricated by holographic lithography or mechanical ruling. In order to overcome the issues of the above fabrication methods, a method based on electron beam lithography-near field lithography (EBL-NFH) is proposed to make good use of the flexibility of EBL and the high throughput of NFH. In this paper, we showed a newly designed soft x-ray VLSG with a central groove density of 3600 lines/mm, which is to be realized based on EBL-NFH. First, the optimization of the spatial distribution of line density and groove profile of the VLSG was shown. As an important element in NFH, a fused silica mask plays a key role during NFH in order to obtain a required line density of VLSG. Therefore, second, the transfer relationship of spatial distribution of line densities between fused silica mask and resist grating was investigated in different exposure modes during NFH. We proposed a formulation about the transfer of line density to design of the groove density distribution of a fused silica grating mask. Finally, the spatial distribution of line densities between the fused silica mask, which is to be fabrication by using EBL, was demonstrated.
KEYWORDS: Etching, Ion beams, Photoresist materials, Diffraction gratings, Monte Carlo methods, Sputter deposition, Lithium, Quartz, Ions, Chemical species
A new method for controlling the groove profiles of diffraction gratings which changes the etching angle and etching time, meanwhile divides the etching area in the substrate into multi-layers to have a good approximation for the theory is introduced. We put forward a multi-layers etching model on the base of the ion bean sputtering (IBS) which can calculate the etching time and etching angle. We test the curved grooves profiles and get the optimizations for the number of the multi-layers, etching time and etching time in this model. Also a photoresist grating is applied for the etching experiment. The results indicate that the optimized parameters such as the number of the multi-layers result in a smaller root mean square deviation (RMSD) between the theory and the real etching result which show good agreement with the theoretical groove within the variation of ±6% of the etching rate. The simulation predictions and experimental results show that the multi-layers etching model to control the groove profiles of diffraction gratings is available.
Diffractive optical system can be a favorable choice for large-aperture space telescope to reduce the mass and size of image system. To meet the demand of large-aperture, high efficiency, lightweight diffractive optic for high resolution remote sensing, a 200 mm diameter, 20 μmthick, 4-level diffractive membrane fabricated is shown to have over 62% diffraction efficiency into the +1 order, with 0.051 efficiency RMS. Over 66% diffraction efficiency is achieved for a 100 mm aperture membrane, with 0.023 efficiency RMS. The membrane thickness uniformity control is discussed and 8 nm wave front error RMS is achieved in 100 mm diameter.
A wavelength-encoding optical position sensor was designed in this study. The critical component of the sensor is its innovative digital encoding grating ruler (DEGR), which is a substrate on which several blazed grating units with different line densities are arranged parallel to one another following a certain order. Two types of multi-DEGR were designed. We obtained over 100,000 codes that significantly assisted in designing long-range and high-resolution position sensors by optimizing the coding algorithm. The wavelength signals generated by the multi-DEGR were demodulated using concave grating and several photosensitive elements. A 100-mm multi-DEGR with 1000 codes was successfully fabricated using the combined methods of direct laser writing and holographic technology. We described the principle of the sensor in detail and established the entire sensor system. A bench test was conducted to test the signal response of the sensor. Bench test results exhibited 100% accuracy of the signal response of the optical sensor and an excellent temperature performance within −55°C and 75°C.
The ideal focal curve for the soft x-ray flat-field spectrometer is a straight line, but the real one is not, thus the inconformity of aberrations between different wavelengths in the working waveband is inevitable. In order to further reduce aberrations and improve spectral resolutions, multi-area gratings (divided perpendicular the direction of grating grooves) are devised. Firstly, the grating is divided into three areas, and the spectral aberrations for these areas are analyzed by means of ray tracing. Then, diffraction efficiencies for the areas with worse aberrations should be reduced to lower the proportion regional aberrations contributing to the overall aberration, therefore better spectral image could be obtained and the spectral resolution would be improved. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that: using multi-area grating, the spectral resolutions at wavelength of 0.8 and 1.1nm are increased from 123 and 333 to 401 and 671, respectively. At the same time, the spectral resolutions at other wavelengths are not reduced.
To widen the working waveband, a new holographic parallel flat-field grating (HPFG) with two sub-gratings lying parallel on the same substrate is designed. Grating parameters of the two gratings, one for 2~5 nm and the other for 5~30 nm, are optimized based on the aberration theory of concave grating. The radius tolerances of curvature of the substrate are also analyzed. Ray-traced spectral images indicate that errors cased by ±1% deviation of radius can be offset by shifting the detector position within 2.5 mm. Finally, we analyze the spectral image-focusing properties. Theoretical spectral resolution of this new HPFG is pretty much the same as that of existing holographic flat-field grating. The simulation results demonstrate that our work probably can be used in the compact spectrometers with a broad spectral region and moderately high resolution.
As a new type of grating, the freestanding blazed transmission grating combines the advantages of traditional transmission gratings (low mass, relaxed alignment and flatness figure insensitivity) with those of reflection gratings (high broadband diffraction efficiency, high spectral resolution). A freestanding blazed transmission grating with period of 1μm was successfully fabricated by holographic lithography and anisotropic wet etching of silicon. The duty cycle is about 0.13. The aspect ratio of a single grating bar is about 77. The thickness is 10μm and the open area fraction is about 58.8%. The size of a single die is 15mm×15mm divided into four 5mm ×5mm windows. The diffraction efficiency of the grating was measured at the National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory in the wavelength region of 5-50nm. The results show a strong blazing effect in the direction of specular reflection from mirror-like grating sidewalls, as expected.
As an important optical element, beam sampling grating (BSG) is used in the terminal of inertial confinement fusion
(ICF) drivers. It can provide a very slight sampling beam for the precision diagnosing of laser energy and wavefront
distortion. However, in practice, its non-uniform diffraction efficiency seriously influences the accurate signal of
sampling beam, and finally affects diagnostic ability. BSG is usually fabricated by holographic ion beam etched (HIBE)
process. In this paper, a mechanical polishing processing technology was used to improve uniformity of the diffraction
efficiency of BSG after HIBE. In the processing, cerium oxide (CeO2) was used to polish the local areas of grating
where exhibit higher diffraction efficiency with the purpose of changing the depth of grating profile, and then they have
similar efficiency with the surrounding areas. By iteration of the above process, BSG finally achieve the improved
uniformity of diffraction efficiency over the area of a 430 x 430 mm2. The RMS of diffraction efficiency of BSG after
mechanical polishing shows great reduction down to 4.8% as compared with that of the as-polished RMS of 21%. The
effects of this processing on laser damage was characterized by the measuring the LIDT for the laser radiations of
355nm.
Parameters of two spherical waves are firstly optimized to get the exact groove densities of diffractive gratings.
Consequently, the groove density differences between on the plane and on the curved substrates are derived. Therefore,
some experimental results are provided to demonstrate the validity of this method above. Meanwhile, the curvatures of
the substrates are measured three times by using long trace profiler (LTP), which assures the repeatability of the bending
technique for grating substrates. At last, the advantage of this method is exhibited through comparing the errors of
grating groove density fabricated by this technique with only two spherical waves.
We present new progress of the diffraction grating interferometer being pre-aligned used a double frequency grating. To
measure the parallelism of the double frequency grating to a nicety before being built in the interferometer, a device
based on Diffraction Technique for measuring the parallelism of the double frequency grating is designed. It is built of a
semiconductor laser, a collimator, gratings, a precision turnplate, a beeline workbench, a redressal shelves, a ccd
detector. The system error of the device is analyzed in this paper, and the parallelism of the double frequency grating is
measured by this device. The results demonstrate that the diffraction measuring device suits the parallelism measured the
diffracting grating interferometer based on the double frequency grating of that parallelism can attain a high pre-aligning
precision.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.