Design and fabrication of diffractive optical elements by use of gray-scale photolithography.
Diffractive optical elements (DOEs) are key components in the miniaturization of optical systems because of their planarity and extreme thinness. We demonstrate the fabrication of DOEs by use of gray-scale photolithography with a high-energy-beam sensitive glass photomask. We obtained DOE lenses with continuous phase profiles as small as 800 microm in diameter and 5.9 microm in the outermost grating pitch by selecting a suitable optical density for each height level and optimizing the process variables. Microlenses patterned with eight levels and replicated by UV embossing with the polymer master mold showed a diffraction efficiency of 81.5%, which was sufficiently high for the devices to be used as optical pickups. The effects of deviations in diffraction efficiency between the DOE height and profile design were analyzed.
Sohn
Jin-Seung
JS
School of Information Storage Engineering and Center for Information Storage Devices, Yonsei University, Sudaemoon-Ku, Seoul 120-749, Korea.
Lee
Myung-Bok
MB
Kim
Wan-Chin
WC
Cho
Eun-Hyung
EH
Kim
Tae-Wan
TW
Yoon
Chan-Young
CY
Park
No-Cheol
NC
Park
Young-Pil
YP