Open Access
19 March 2023 Improving transmittance of long-wave infrared guided-mode resonant filters
Author Affiliations +
Abstract

The long-wave infrared (LWIR) spectral region spanning from 8 to 12 μm is useful for many scientific and industrial applications. Many of these applications require use of either a bandpass or a bandstop filter that can be realized by the guided-mode resonance (GMR) effect with subwavelength periodic features in layered dielectric materials transparent in the LWIR. The GMR filters operating in the LWIR region are fabricated by depositing an amorphous germanium (Ge) film to form a zero-contrast (ZC) waveguide-grating (WGG) on a polished zinc selenide (ZnSe) substrate. In general, the backside of a ZnSe substrate with refractive index 2.41 is uncoated causing a 17% Fresnel-reflection loss in the light transmitted through the filter due to a large impedance mismatch at the ZnSe/air interface. Because we use such filters in the LWIR laser experiments for notch filtering, to improve the filter transmittance we used ZnSe substrates coated on one-side with broadband antireflection coating (ARC) covering the 7 to 12 μm spectral range to fabricate GMRFs with one-dimensional (1D) Ge ZC WGG. We employed high-spatial resolution e-beam lithography and reactive-ion etching nanofabrication techniques to achieve high-performance large-area (12 × 12 mm2) 1D notch filters with subwavelength periods. We characterized polarization dependent spectral performance of the prototype filters with both coherent and incoherent incident light using a tunable quantum cascade laser system that spans the 7 to 12 μm region, and a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer with collimated incident beam to achieve close to 15% improvement in the peak transmittance as well as significant reduction in coherent noise compared to our earlier results with GMRFs without ARC. Here, we present the filter design simulation and measurement results.

CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
Neelam Gupta and Junyeob Song "Improving transmittance of long-wave infrared guided-mode resonant filters," Optical Engineering 62(3), 035102 (19 March 2023). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.62.3.035102
Received: 19 September 2022; Accepted: 14 February 2023; Published: 19 March 2023
Advertisement
Advertisement
KEYWORDS
Tunable filters

Transmittance

Optical filters

Long wavelength infrared

Polarization

Zinc selenide

Quantum cascade lasers

Back to Top