Diffractive and Interferometric Characterization of Nanostructured Photopolymer for Sharp Diffractive Optical Elements Recording

We study the behavior of a nanoparticle-polymer composite (NPC) material, based on a thiol-ene monomer system, working with long grating spacing. Thus, we evaluate the suitability of the NPC for storing complex diffractive optical elements with sharp profiles, such as blazed gratings. Using holographic methods, we measure the “apparent” diffusion of the material and the influence of the spatial period on this diffusion. The applicability of this material in complex diffractive optical elements (DOEs) recording is analyzed using an interferometric method. Supported by the results of this analysis, we record blazed gratings with different grating spacing and measure the maximum diffraction efficiency (DE) achieved. The results show that NPC has a good behavior in this range of spatial frequencies.This work was supported by the “Ministerio de Economía Industria y Competitividad” (Spain) under projects FIS2017-82919-R (MINECO/AEI/FEDER, UE) and FIS2015-66570-P (MINECO/FEDER). and by “Generalitat Valenciana” (Spain) (PROMETEOII/2015/015). Some of the authors, R.F. and Y.T., acknowledge financial support by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan under grant 15H03576