Unaxis-Balzers Aktiengesellschaft

Bernd Maisenholder

Johannes Edlinger

Michael Pawlak

Gert Ludwig Duveneck

Claus Heine

Max Wiki

A light coupling element is proposed with a surface () of a material which is transparent to light of a given wavelength (&#x3bb;). In order for the light coupling element to act independently of the direction of the vectorial parameters of the light, such as in particular of the polarization, on the surface of the light coupling element line-form indentations or elevations () are provided which are equidistantly parallel and which intersect at given angles (&#x3c6;).

Light coupling element

A coupling grating formed as a line grating with a grating period between 100 nm and 2500 nm, a substrate () is covered with a photoresist layer () and exposed for instance at the Lithrow angle (&#x398;) or at 0&#xb0; to a mercury-vapour lamp () via a folding mirror (') through a phase mask () in the near field of which the photoresist layer is arranged, then structured by reactive ion etching and provided with a transparent layer by reactive DC magnetron sputtering, particularly pulsed DC sputtering or AC-superimposed DC sputtering. The phase mask () is structured in advance with the laser two-beam interference method. The process is particularly suited for the production of optical elements, particularly evane-scent field sensor plates and optical couplers for communications technology which can be employed in particular as filters for wavelength multiplexing in fibre-optic networks.

METHOD FOR PRODUCING A GRID STRUCTURE, AN OPTICAL ELEMENT, AN EVANESCENCE FIELD SENSOR PLATE, MICROTITRE PLATE AND AN OPTICAL COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING COUPLER AS WELL AS A DEVICE FOR MONITORING A WAVELENGTH

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Bernd Maisenholder