title: Fabrication and testing of chemically micromachined silicon echelle gratings.
abstract: We have fabricated large, coarsely ruled, echelle patterns on silicon wafers by using photolithography and chemical-etching techniques. The grating patterns consist of 142-microm-wide, V-shaped grooves with an opening angle of 70.6 degrees, blazed at 54.7 degrees. We present a detailed description of our grating-fabrication techniques and the results of extensive testing. We have measured peak diffraction efficiencies of 70% at lambda = 632.8 nm and conclude that the gratings produced by our method are of sufficient quality for use in high-resolution spectrographs in the visible and near IR (lambda approximately = 500-5000 nm).
authors.affiliation: Center for Radiophysics and Space Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA. keller@astro.as.utexas.edu
authors.forename: L D
authors.initials: LD
authors.lastname: Keller
authors.forename: D T
authors.initials: DT
authors.lastname: Jaffe
authors.forename: O A
authors.initials: OA
authors.lastname: Ershov
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Benedict
authors.forename: U U
authors.initials: UU
authors.lastname: Graf