A color filter incorporating a subwavelength patterned grating in a metal film perforated with a square array of circular apertures on a quartz substrate was accomplished. Its performance was enhanced by applying a dielectric overlay to the grating layer so as to match the refractive indices of the media on either side of it. The device was designed by utilizing the finite-difference time-domain method and implemented by adopting the electron-beam direct-writing technique. Two different devices were fabricated with the structural parameters: the grating height of 50 nm and the pitch of 340 nm for the red color and 260 nm for the green color. For the red color filter the center wavelength was 680 nm and the peak transmission 57%, while for the green color one the center wavelength was 550 nm and the peak transmission 50%. It was confirmed the introduction of the index matching overlay led to an increase of ~15% in the transmission efficiency and helped combine double bands into a single dominant band as well, thereby improving the color selectivity of the filter.

Transmission type color filters based on a thin film Ag-SiO(2)-Ag etalon were built on a quartz substrate, enabling the infrared suppressed transmission and large effective area. They were designed by taking into account the influence of the dispersion characteristics and the thickness of the silver metal. Three different color filters were devised: The cavity length for the red, green and blue filter was 160 nm, 130 nm, and 100 nm respectively, while the metal layer was fixed at 25 nm. The observed spectral pass band was centered at 650 nm, 555 nm, and 480 nm for the red, green, and blue device; the corresponding bandwidth was about 120 nm, 100 nm, and 120 nm; and the peak transmission was all ~60%. For the oblique light incidence the angular dependence of the peak relative transmission was measured to be approximately 1%/degree. The spectral response of the device was also analyzed for two different polarizations as the tilt angle varied up to 12(o), and it was found to be hardly polarization dependent. Finally, as for the positional dependence the relative transmission and the center wavelength were found to vary within 10% and 5 nm respectively over an effective area of 4x4 cm(2).

A nanophotonic polarization-independent visible wavelength filter is presented, incorporating a symmetric metal-dielectric resonant structure on quartz substrate, where a sub-wavelength grating, made up of a two-dimensional array of Al square sheets, is integrated with a Si(3)N(4) slab waveguide via an oxide layer. Incident light is orthogonally diffracted by the symmetric grating towards two directions of the grating groove, and then resonantly coupled to both transverse electric and transverse magnetic guided modes associated with the underlying waveguide, irrespective of light polarization. Polarization independent bandpass filtering was thus achieved around specific wavelengths, determined by the grating pitch and the effective index of the waveguide. Three devices, operating in the blue, green and red spectral bands, were built through design and analysis drawing upon the finite-difference time-domain method. The devices, DEV I, II, and III, were constructed with grating pitches of 285, 355 and 395 nm, respectively, while the core was 100 nm thick. They were inspected to function as an efficient bandpass filter, centered at 460, 560 and 610 nm, with bandwidths of about 13, 14 and 17 nm, respectively; the peak transmission efficiencies were consistently over 85%. Furthermore, the transfer characteristics, insensitive to light polarization, were satisfactorily confirmed for normal incidence.

We have demonstrated a highly efficient electrically tunable color filter, which provides precise control of color output, taking advantage of a nano-photonic polarization-tailored dichroic resonator combined with a liquid-crystal based polarization rotator. The visible dichroic resonator based on the guided mode resonance, which incorporates a planar dielectric waveguide in Si3N4 integrated with an asymmetric two-dimensional subwavelength Al grating with unequal pitches along its principal axes, exhibited polarization specific transmission featuring high efficiency up to 75%. The proposed tunable color filters were constructed by combining three types of dichroic resonators, each of which deals with a mixture of two primary colors (i.e. blue/green, blue/red, and green/red) with a polarization rotator exploiting a twisted nematic liquid crystal cell. The output colors could be dynamically and seamlessly customized across the blend of the two corresponding primary colors, by altering the polarization via the voltage applied to the polarization rotator. For the blue/red filter, the center wavelength was particularly adjusted from 460 to 610 nm with an applied voltage variation of 2 V, leading to a tuning range of up to 150 nm. And the spectral tuning was readily confirmed via color mapping. The proposed devices may permit the tuning span to be readily extended by tailoring the grating pitches.

A color filter based on a subwavelength patterned grating in poly silicon was proposed and realized on a quartz substrate. It was produced by utilizing the laser interference lithography technique to feature wide effective area compared to the costly e-beam lithography. An oxide layer was introduced on top of the silicon grating layer as a mask to facilitate the silicon-etching and to enhance the filtering selectivity as well. The structural parameters for the device include the grating pitch and height of 450 nm and 100 nm respectively, the silicon stripe width of 150 nm, and the oxide thickness of 200 nm. The fabricated device offered a spectral response suitable for a blue color filter, exhibiting the center wavelength of approximately 460 nm, the bandwidth approximately 90 nm and the peak transmission 40%. The positional dependence of its performance was examined to find the effective area of 3 x 3 mm(2), where the variation in the relative transmission efficiency and in the center wavelength was less than 10% and 2 nm respectively. Finally, the influence of the angle of the incident beam upon the transfer characteristics of the device was investigated to reveal that the rate of change in the relative transmission was equivalent to about 1.5%/degree.