Novel diffraction gratings fabricated by means of plasma nanotechnologies

A volume phase holographic grating (VPHG) achieves very high diffraction efficiency up to 100% for S or P polarized light at the first diffraction order. However, diffraction efficiency of the VPHG for non-polarized light becomes low according as Bragg angle becomes large, and bandwidth of diffraction efficiency becomes narrow according as refractive index modulation of grating lattice becomes small. A volume binary grating with rectangular lattice, consists of high and low refractive index media with large or small duty ratio, is able to achieve very high efficiency nearly 100% and a wide band width for both S and P polarization light. We have successfully fabricated germanium immersion gratings of step groove shape with resolving power of 45,000 at 10 micron by using a nano-precision 3D grinding machine and ELID (ELectrolytic In-process Dressing) method. However, the method requires a large amount of machine times and efforts. We had proposed a novel immersion grating with slot shape lattice of total reflection mirrors, which achieves high performance and lower fabrication cost. We describe the photolithography and the latest plasma nano-technologies for fabrications of the novel diffraction gratings in our presentation. We also introduce birefringence volume gratings in this article.