Due to the threshold nature of the thermochemical oxidation process, it is possible to use a non-Gaussian intensity distribution within the writing spot, for increasing of spatial resolution of direct laser writing technology. The non-Gaussian distribution was obtained by distorting the Gaussian beam with an annular diaphragm. The width of the central peak (FWHM) is 40% smaller than the width of the Gaussian spot. It has been shown that by distorting the Gaussian spot, a smaller single line width can be obtained. The effect of side lobes during multipass writing on the width of the resulting single line was studied.
As applied to a maskless laser lithography writing system Heidelberg DWL 66+ and the photoresist-chromium technology, we have found the tolerances on fabricating the binary-phase Dammann gratings having 7x7 useful diffraction orders and a structure separable in X and Y components and illuminated by a beam with a wavelength of 633 nm. It has been found that the obtained tolerances guarantee the production of Dammann gratings with a total diffraction efficiency close to the theoretical one and a root-mean-square error of departure of the intensity of useful diffraction orders of less than 10%.
Diffractive Transmission Sphere (DTS) can be successfully used for interferometric testing. Unfortunately, phenomena of annular rings occur on interferogram in a case of small period of diffractive patter. This effect reduces quality of measurements and became critical for apertures close to f/1. This work is devoted to computer simulation of such effects and development of technique for their partial compensation. It was proposed to do this compensation by modifying duty cycle. Computer simulation on the base of the rigorous coupled wave analysis was performed. Experimental DTS with was fabricated and tested.
Diffractive optics are promising for use in interferometry as a Transmission Sphere (TS) due to the fact that it is simpler and cheaper, since it consists of one component. However, in the manufacture and use of Diffractive TS (DTS) with an aperture up to f/1, many problems arise that are not specific for classical TS. One of these problems is the effects of polarization, which can affect the interferogram. These negative effects can occur when diffractive TS has a period close to the interferometer wavelength. This work is devoted to computer simulation of such effects and development of technique for their partial compensation. To avoid the harmful effects of laser beam depolarization and to decrease the two-pass transmittance of a typical DTS at its margins, we decompose the local linear polarization into the radial and azimuthal components and evaluate separately the forward and backward transmittance of each polarization component for the case with a spatially variable prescribed local duty cycle.
The important effects, techniques, and factors are considered that aim to increase the spatial resolution of a scanning direct laser writing of diffractive structures on thin films of transition metals from titanium group (Ti, Zr, and Hf). The writing process is based on metal oxidation under the thermal action of a tightly focused laser beam. Scanning speed of the laser beam and film thickness were varied to get a regime of through oxidation (TO) of the metal film under laser heating. It results in strong increase of the film transmission in exposed area. TO ensures a strong threshold due to feedback connected with decreasing of laser power absorption near center of focused gaussian laser spot. To the best of our knowledge, the direct laser writing of amplitude diffractive structures on Zr and Hf films were performed for the first time. The new regime of direct laser writing on thin Zr films was revealed. It allows forming tracks with width of 100 nm and less at laser spot diameter of 700 nm and laser wavelength of 532 nm. In this work, the spectral dependence of the refractive index and extinction coefficient of hafnium films was first experimentally determined in the wavelength range of 250–1100 nm.
For a laser scanning nanolithographic system operating at a deep ultraviolet wavelength of 266 nm, a hybrid highnumerical-aperture objective is proposed. The most important focusing part of such an objective is a combination of a diffractive optical element (DOE) and a spherical annular reflector (SAR). In the considered version, the proposed objective has the numerical aperture of NA = 0.95, the working distance of 1 mm and the size of a sub-wavelength focused spot of 105 nm (FWHM). However, such performance was found to require a high quality of optical components, as well as severe mechanical tolerances and a high precision of their alignment. The problem of a precision alignment of the optical components is additionally complicated by the fact that the wavelength of 266 nm is not visible and it is therefore not possible to use conventional alignment methods. To alleviate this problem, we propose to use an auxiliary brightening laser with a visible doubled wavelength equal to 532 nm. A dichroic mirror is used to combine the visible and invisible laser beams. In order to apply the proposed method, it is required to optimize the diffraction structure of the DOE for the simultaneous operation in the second order of diffraction at 266 nm and in the first order at 532 nm. An example of the optimized binary-phase structure of a two-wavelength DOE is given alongside with the optical response of this structure at the visible and invisible wavelengths. Also presented are the results of a computer simulation of the main aberrations of the focusing system under the displacement of its components. It is shown that the required accuracy of assembly can be achieved by the use of only a few of alignment methods at the visible wavelength.
Based on the conditions of alowable angular sampling of interfering waves, monochromatic multiple imaging systems
with replicating spatial-frequency filters in the form of Fabry-Perot Interferometers, concentric ring masks, and
diffractive multifocal lenses are compared with each other in their performance. Though these systems are shown to
realize the same effect of multiple equidistant imaging, the forms of manifestation of the effect are not identical due to
the difference in spectral content of the wave fields produced by the systems. The most perfect systems are found to be
those with pure-phase diffractive multifocal lenses. First of all, they benefits from the extremely high total light
efficiency and the sharply defined longitudinal localization of the visualized object space defined by the efficient focal
depth. This enhances considerably the brightness of reproduced images and decreases their parasitic diffraction dispersion, background noise, and blurring.
Laser metrology often requires the precision forming of a probe laser beam with necessary wavefront shape or given intensity distribution. This problem is solved optimally by application of diffractive optical elements (DOE). In the IA&E SB RAS a circular laser writing system (CLWS) was created for high precision DOE fabrication. This system allows to fabricate arbitrary DOEs with minimum feature sizes below 0.6 ?m and the radial position accuracy of about 0.1 ?m over 300 mm substrates. The investigations carried out have confirmed promising prospects of application of high precision DOEs fabricated with the help of CLWS for solving various metrological problems.
A compact absolute shaft angular encoder with resolution of 5 arc seconds (18 bits) has been developed. It has the direct readout channel with 14-bit optical code disk and the interpolation channel for obtaining the additional 4 low-order bits by means of analog-to-digital conversion and processing of the quadrature signals from the interpolation track of the code disk. The small sizes of the encoder are achieved by employing special components. Among them are a multiple beam illuminator with diffractive Dammann grating, specialized electronics used for digital data reading and processing and implemented on the base of integrated linear photodetector array, and also a microcontroller with RISC-processor and programmable device.
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