Ultraviolet laser writing system based on polar scanning strategy to produce subwavelength metal gratings for surface plasmon resonance

Abstract

Abstract. We demonstrate the use of ultraviolet (UV) laser lithography in the production of subwavelength metal gratings. A laser writing system with a 413-nm Kr laser is used to write patterns on a resist-coated fused silica substrate mounted on a rotating table with a linear slider. One-and two-dimensional patterns are written in the resist at a selected sampling pitch or grating period, and the substrate is dry etched and coated with Au to obtain metallized gratings. Surface plasmon resonance dips, which appear in the reflectance spectra of the gratings, shift depending on the orientation of the incident polarization, because the gratings lack perfect symmetry owing to a system-induced skew in the writing beam. This dip shift can be considered tolerable when the gratings are used as a signal enhancer in Raman sensing applications. We conclude that UV laser writing based on polar coordinates is a candidate method for surface structuring on submicron scales. Devising a method to attain an unskewed beam will be the subject of future work. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

Beam delivery system with a non-digitized diffractive beam splitter for laser-drilling of silicon

“…Using a polar-format laser writing system [20], the splitter patterns were drawn on 256 levels with a focused laser beam in a photoresist film coating a substrate. The exposure wavelength was 413 nm, the focused beam width was 0.5 μm (1/e 2 ), the drawing pitch was in the range 0.10-0.30 μm (depending on the profiles), and the substrate was 1.2 mm thick and 200 mm in diameter.…”