Volume Modified Fresnel Zone Plates Fabricated by Femtosecond Laser Direct Writing

The development of fabrication techniques for diffractive optical elements (DOEs) has accelerated because they can perform many optical functions like lenses, gratings, optical signal processors, beam splitters, and wavelength multiplexers and demultiplexers. Current Fresnel zone plates suffer from low diffraction efficiency because of manufacturing imperfections that cause scattering and phase shift errors.

Purdue University researchers have developed a novel method for designing and fabricating low numerical aperture (NA) and high NA volume Fresnel zone plates inside a bulk of fused silica.

Advantages:

-Allows for volume writing of diffractive optical elements

-Reduces cost of fabrication with high efficiency

Potential Applications:

-Materials

-Mantufacturing

TRL: 3

Intellectual Property:

Keywords: Diffractive optical elements, DOEs, Fresnel zone plates, volume writing, low numerical aperture, high numerical aperture, fused silica, diffractive optical element fabrication, wavelength multiplexers, beam splitters, Materials and Manufacturing, Polymers