<title>Evaporative Thin Metal Films As Polarizers</title>

Abstract

Thin metal films have been fabricated by vacuum evaporation, which polarize transmitted light at near -infrared and visible wavelengths.Polarization of normal-incidence light was observed for silver, gold and copper films made by this technique. The polarizing films were produced by directing a beam of metal atoms onto the smooth surface of an optically transparent substrate at a large angle of incidence.The film structure revealed by electron-microscope examination is a dense array of parallel metal whiskers aligned opposite the direction of the incident metal atom beam.Polarization is produced by the hertzian parallel -wire effect, which is also the polarization principle of the conventional wiregrid polarizer. The resulting polarizer material can be produced in sheet form or applied as a coating to optical elements.

Electrochemical characterization of nanostructured Ag:TiN thin films produced by glancing angle deposition on polyurethane substrates for bio-electrode applications

“…In recent years, the extensive dissemination of their works in leading scientific journals demonstrates the strong interest generated by nanostructured thin films prepared with this method. Moreover, the growing interest of the GLAD technique shown by many researchers coming from academia and industry [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38] is due to the possibility to tailor even further the majority of the properties of most thin film systems, which can be of major interest in the fields of photonics, mechanics, catalysis or biology. Thus, GLAD thin films, prepared by either evaporation or magnetron sputtering are becoming an attractive strategy to obtain a wide variety of architectures and sculptured materials at the micro-and nanoscale.…”

Fabrication of thin-film micropolarizer arrays for visible imaging polarimetry

“…5 The linewidth of the metal grid must be much smaller than the wavelength of the radiation in order to achieve a high-polarization extinction ratio. 6,7 Metal-grid micropolarizer arrays for IR imaging polarimetry have recently been reported, 8 but effective metal-grid micropolarizers in the visible wavelength range have not been demonstrated. Photolithographically patterning polymer polarization film to make micropolarizer arrays was proposed by Faris.…”

Polarization imaging: principles and integrated polarimeters

“…Polaroid films, or H-sheets, like the sheet polarizers invented by Land [45], [46] use this same principle on a much smaller scale. Dense and thin arrays of "micro-wires," or dichromophores, composed of conducting crystals, molecules, or small-thin strips of metal [47], are aligned along a common axis either magnetically, electrostatically, or mechanically, depending on the materials used and the technique applied [45], [44], [48]. These dichromophores absorb radiation at optical frequencies, converting optical energy along the axis of absorption into heat.…”