Resonant gratings with an etch-stop layer and a fabrication-error tolerant design

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Date
2018
Authors
Hogan, Brian
Lewis, Liam
Romero-Vivas, Javier
Ochalski, Tomasz J.
Hegarty, Stephen P.
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Optical Society of America
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Abstract
Sub-wavelength gratings (SWG) have shown much promise for applications such as lightweight high bandwidth reflectors, polarising filters and focusing lenses. Unfortunately, grating performance may be rapidly degraded through variability in grating dimensions. We demonstrate, in particular, how an error in depth of etch can be detrimental to the performance of zero contrast grating reflectors. We mitigate the impact of this fabrication error through the introduction of an etch stop layer and in so doing we experimentally realise a high bandwidth reflector based on this modified structure. Another common fabrication error is variation in the duty-cycle of fabricated gratings. This duty-cycle variation can weaken grating performance, however we demonstrate that grating designs that exhibit tolerance to duty-cycle fluctuation can be identified through simulation. Finally, we discuss the impact of lateral etching and the resulting sidewall concavity. We present our approach for numerically predicting the spectral response from such a grating and also for convenience we outline an approach for quickly approximating grating performance. Good agreement is observed between these numerical predictions and measurements made on a HCG with concave sidewalls. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement
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Keywords
High-contrast gratings , Coupled-wave A nalysis , Reflectors , Implementation , Filters
Citation
Hogan, B., Lewis, L., Romero-Vivas, J., Ochalski, T. J. and Hegarty, S. P. (2018) 'Resonant gratings with an etch-stop layer and a fabrication-error tolerant design', Optics Express, 26(10), pp. 13205-13213. doi: 10.1364/OE.26.013205
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© 2018, Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement