Precise blaze angle measurements of lithographically fabricated Silicon immersion gratings and the design of simple prototype instruments for grating deployment

Silicon immersion gratings and grisms enable compact, high-throughput, near-infrared spectrographs. These instruments are used in ground-based efforts to characterize stellar and exoplanet atmospheres and in space-based observatories. Our grating fabrication technique uses x-ray crystallography to orient the crystal structure of silicon, followed by a specialized lithography and wet chemical etching to produce a blazed grating. The etching process takes advantage of the Silicon crystal structure and relative difference in etch rates between the [100] and [111] crystal planes. This allows us to produce parts that have phase uniformities of