Design and fabrication of binary slanted surface-relief gratings for a planar optical interconnection

J. Michael Miller (1) , Nicole de Beaucoudrey (1) , Pierre Chavel (1) , Jari Turunen (2) , Edmond Cambril (3)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Scop
2 University of Joensuu
3 L2M - Laboratoire de Microstructures et de Microélectronique

We propose the use of binary slanted surface-relief gratings with parallel-groove walls as input and output couplers in a planar optical interconnect. Parametric optimization of cascaded output couplers is employed to design an interconnect consisting of N output couplers producing a uniform intensity distribution with a high efficiency that may be realized in one lithographic etching step. The sensitivity of a N = 4 interconnect to various fabrication errors is analyzed. We demonstrate the operation of a slanted surface-relief grating manufactured with electron-beam lithography and reactive-ion etching for an operating wavelength of λ = 0.633 μm.

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

J. Michael Miller, Nicole de Beaucoudrey, Pierre Chavel, Jari Turunen, Edmond Cambril. Design and fabrication of binary slanted surface-relief gratings for a planar optical interconnection. Applied optics, 1997, 36 (23), pp.5717-5727. ⟨10.1364/AO.36.005717⟩. ⟨hal-00878957⟩