PFI-TT: Development of high-performance nanostructured polarizers

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The broader impact/commercial potential of this PFI project is grounded in transformational new ideas for high-performance polarizers. These types of optical components are widely applied in practice, for example, in telecommunication systems, laser technology, medical sensor systems, television screens, and imaging instrumentation. The project lays a foundation for a pioneering device technology with new operational regimes and applicability. Simultaneously, the project enhances scientific and technological understanding by elucidating the optical properties and utility of lossless nanostructured resonant films on which the device concept is based. These research and development activities will strengthen US competitiveness in nanophotonics and metamaterials. Moreover, this project establishes partnerships between industry and academia. An academic team will provide device design specifications and prototype fabrication. A primary industrial partner will potentially distribute polarizes meeting specifications via existing sales and marketing platforms. The project provides excellent analytical and experimental experience for both graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The project is likely to have high commercial impact, as the proposed patent-pending lossless polarizers with the predicted performance attributes do not currently exist in the market. The proposed project delivers new polarizer technology based on original ideas in photonic device engineering. The intellectual merit of this technology lies in the novelty of our discovery that a sparse grid of dielectric nanowires is nearly completely invisible to one polarization state while being opaque to the orthogonal polarization state with this property existing over significantly wide spectral bands. It is scientifically extremely important that the high-efficiency, wideband spectra presented can be generated in these minimal resonance systems. Based on this discovery, our research objectives focus on design, fabrication and testing of compact, low-loss, dielectric polarizers for deployment in key spectral regions. Accordingly, we will design and fabricate simple single-layer elements as well as nanogrid multi-module lattices that provide excellent performance using a variety of practical materials. We plan complete spectral verification of the fabricated devices and comparison with theoretical predictions. We will measure polarization performance including bandwidth and extinction ratios in reflection and transmission of individual two-grating modules and of concatenated multilayer modules. Technical goals include high polarization extinction ratios of 1,000,000:1 and insertion loss below 1%. Manufacturing strategies involving high-resolution UV-laser interferometric patterning and carefully chosen materials will accomplish the goals of the project.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.