Mid-infrared characterization of volume holographic gratings and nanofabrication of optical structures

CHED 326

Manuel Alingog, manuel_alingog@hotmail.com1, Héctor-Eduardo Mendoza Solano, templarium@gmail.com1, David R. Brown, dbrown@swccd.edu1, Gregory J. Steckman, steckman@ondax.com2, and Christophe Moser, moser@ondax.com2. (1) Department of Chemistry, Southwestern College, 900 Otay Lakes Road, Chula Vista, CA 91910-7299, (2) Ondax, Incorporated, 850 E. Duarte Road, Monrovia, CA 91016
Volume Holographic Gratings (VHGs) serve various functions in the design, construction, and performance enhancement of lasers and devices that employ lasers. Ondax, Inc. manufactures glass VHGs with a proprietary process that modifies the local index of refraction of the glass by producing nano-clusters with different indices of refraction from the bulk glass. The purpose of this research was two-fold, with one component aimed to characterize Ondax VHGs in the mid-Infrared (IR) spectral region via Attenuated Total Reflectance (ATR) measurements that employed both ZnSe and Ge ATR crystals. The second aspect of the project involved nanofabrication of optical structures in the VHGs through chemical etching. Preliminary results demonstrated slight but quantifiable differences in the IR spectra acquired with ATR from materials with various concentrations of nano-clusters. This work will underscore correlations between differing sample composition and variation in the IR spectra, along with proposing structural elements to account for spectral differences.