Improving the optical performance of etched silicon gratings

Kuzmenko, Paul J.; Ciarlo, D.

doi:10.1117/12.317322

Cited by 12 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The total measured integrated scatter at 0.633 m is less than 1% scatter as shown in Figure 6. This level of scatter is already a factor of three times better than that of a commercial 23.2 l/mm echelle grating measured by our collaborators, Kuzmenko & Ciarlo in 1998. It is also a factor of ~ 10 times better than previous silicon grating results by other groups (Kuzmenko et al 1998;Keller et al 2000).…”

Section: (B) Integrated Scattered Light Measurementssupporting

confidence: 48%

“…This level of scatter is already a factor of three times better than that of a commercial 23.2 l/mm echelle grating measured by our collaborators, Kuzmenko & Ciarlo in 1998. It is also a factor of ~ 10 times better than previous silicon grating results by other groups (Kuzmenko et al 1998;Keller et al 2000). The integrated light levels from silicon grisms with silicon grating surface quality are also being evaluated with our PIRIS near IR spectrograph.…”

Section: (B) Integrated Scattered Light Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 72%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Breakthroughs in Silicon Grism and Immersion Grating Technology at Penn State

McDavitt

Miller

et al. 2003

SPIE Proceedings

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Fabrication of silicon grisms up to 2 inches in dimension has become a routine process at Penn State thanks to newly developed techniques in chemical etching, lithography and post-processing. The newly etched silicon grisms have typical rms surface roughness of ~ 9 nm with the best reaching 0.9 nm, significantly lower than our previous attempts (~ 20-30 nm). The wavefront quality of the etched gratings is high. Typical wavefront error is ~ 0.035 wave at 0.6328 micron, indicating diffraction-limited performance in the entire infrared wavelengths (1.2-10 microns) where silicon has excellent transmission. These processes have also significantly eliminated visible defects due to grating mask breaks during chemical etching. For the best grisms, we have less than 1 defect per cm 2 . The measured total integrated scatter is less than 1% at 0.6328 micron, indicating similar or lower scatter in the IR when grisms are operated in transmission. These new generation grisms are being evaluated with our Penn State near IR Imager and Spectrograph (PIRIS) in cryogenic temperature. We are applying the new techniques in etching an 80x40 mm 2 grating on 30 mm thick substrate to make an anamorphic silicon immersion grating, which can provide a diffraction-limited spectral resolution of R = 220,000 at 2.2 micron. We plan to put this immersion grating in a modified PIRIS to measure magnetic field strength using the Fe I line at 1.56 micron among hundreds of nearby solar type stars to investigate the probability of the Maunder Minimum using the Mt. Wilson 100inch with adaptive optics in 2003.

show abstract

Section: (B) Integrated Scattered Light Measurementssupporting

confidence: 48%

Section: (B) Integrated Scattered Light Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 72%

Breakthroughs in Silicon Grism and Immersion Grating Technology at Penn State

McDavitt

Miller

et al. 2003

SPIE Proceedings

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This level of scatter is already a factor of three times better than that of a commercial 23.2 l/mm echelle grating measured by Kuzmenko & Ciarlo (1998). Wavefront quality of the etched gratings has been evaluated by a Zygo interferometer.…”

Section: 2-24 Micron Broadband Coatingmentioning

confidence: 98%

Silicon anamorphic gratings for IR high-resolution spectroscopy with future giant telescopes

Bernecker

McDavitt

et al. 2003

Future Giant Telescopes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Future 30m telescopes provide enormous challenges for IR high resolution spectrograph design. The spectrograph collimated beam size will reach ~ 400 mm in order to reach R ~ 25,000 under 0.4 arcsec seeing-limited images. This beam size will push an IR spectrograph volume larger than that of the giant optical echelle spectrograph at 10m telescopes, e.g. the Keck HIRES is 6 6 4 m 3 (Vogt et al. 1994). The cost would be enormous considering the entire instrument must be cooled to cryogenic temperatures to be feasible. Here we propose a new kind of IR spectrometer using silicon anamorphic immersion gratings as the main disperser. By operating silicon immersion gratings in an anamorphic immersion mode, the increase in spectral resolving power can be up to a factor of n 2 or ~12 times at Brewster's angle (Dekker 1987). Hence, to reach the same spectral resolution, the collimated beam size is reduced to ~33mm in diameter, which makes the design of the instrument relatively easy.The recent breakthrough in silicon immersion grating technology at Penn State has allowed us to routinely fabricate high quality silicon grisms and immersion gratings with sizes of up to 2 inches, <1% integrated scattered light, and diffraction-limited performance thanks to newly developed techniques. Silicon anamorphic immersion gratings with etched dimensions of ~4 inches are being developed at Penn State. The first grating will be available for testing in late 2002. Currently, industry can supply up to 12 inch diameter silicon ingots. We plan to develop a new tool to handle this large grating size in our stateof-the-art nanofabrication facility. A silicon anamorphic grating of this size can provide a seeing-limited (0.4 arcsec) spectral resolution of R ~ 30,000 or diffraction-limited spectral resolution of R ~ 750,000 at 2.2 microns. In this paper, technical issues related to the design of an anamorphic grating spectrograph are discussed.

show abstract

“…Recently there have been reports of blazed gratings etched into the hypotenuse of a right angled silicon prism 7,8 . These are called silicon grisms and they achieve a much higher resolution than ordinary reflective gratings 9 .…”

Section: Error In Etched Silicon Gratingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

<title>Minimizing Fizeau fringes during the contact printing of diffraction gratings</title>

et al. 2001

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An index matching fluid has been used to minimize the effect of interference fringes which develop when contact printing diffraction gratings on silicon wafers. These fringes are the result of interference effects when there is a small but uneven gap between the photomask and resist surface. They are especially troublesome when printing and etching large area, coarse diffraction gratings on the surface of silicon wafers and silicon disks.

show abstract

Improving the optical performance of etched silicon gratings

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Breakthroughs in Silicon Grism and Immersion Grating Technology at Penn State

Breakthroughs in Silicon Grism and Immersion Grating Technology at Penn State

Silicon anamorphic gratings for IR high-resolution spectroscopy with future giant telescopes

<title>Minimizing Fizeau fringes during the contact printing of diffraction gratings</title>

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About