Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Fabrication and testing of a silicon immersion grating for infrared spectroscopy

Conference ·
OSTI ID:10175614

Recent advances in silicon micromachining techniques (e.g. anisotropic etching) allow the fabrication of very coarse infrared echelle gratings. When used in immersion mode, the dispersion is increased proportionally to the refractive index. This permits a very significant reduction in the overall size of a spectrometer while maintaining the same resolution. We have fabricated a right triangular prism (30{times}60{times}67 mm with a rectangular entrance face 30{times}38 mm) from silicon with a grating etched into the face of the hypotenuse. The grating covers an area of 32 mm by 64 mm and has a 97.5 PM periodicity with a blaze angle of 63.4{sup o}. The groove surfaces are very smooth with a roughness of a few manometers. Random defects in the silicon are the dominant source of grating scatter ({approx} 12% at 3.39 {mu}m). We measure a grating ghost intensity of 1.2%. The diffraction peak is quite narrow, slightly larger than the Airy disc diameter at F/12. However due to wavefront aberrations, perhaps 15--20% of the diffracted power is in the peak with the rest distributed in a diameter roughly five times the Airy disc.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-48
OSTI ID:
10175614
Report Number(s):
UCRL-JC--117810; CONF-940723--15; ON: DE94017173
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Photoelectrochemical etching of blazed echelle gratings in n-GaAs
Journal Article · Wed Nov 30 23:00:00 EST 1988 · J. Electrochem. Soc.; (United States) · OSTI ID:6237481

Multilayer-coated echelle gratings for soft x rays and extreme ultraviolet
Journal Article · Tue Jan 31 23:00:00 EST 1995 · Review of Scientific Instruments; (United States) · OSTI ID:6863551

Advanced low blaze angle x-ray gratings via nanoimprint replication and plasma etch
Journal Article · Wed Jul 26 00:00:00 EDT 2023 · Optics Express · OSTI ID:2007181