Theoretical analysis, design, fabrication and characterization of dielectric and nonlinear guided-mode resonance optical filters

This dissertation addresses design, fabrication, characterization, and theoretical analysis of guided-mode resonance filters (GMRFs). A new technique to fabricate high-quality dielectric GMRFs is presented. Back-substrate reflection noise is minimized by inserting an antireflective absorption layer between the photoresist and the transparent substrate. The fill factor of the grating is set by controlling the photoresist grating fill factor in the interferometric process. This technique includes a metal lift-off process to increase the etch selectivity in the F-based plasma etch, where the dielectric layer etching depth is controlled while preserving the fill factor. The spectral wavelength and angular measurements of numerous fabricated dielectric GMRFs show excellent agreement with calculations based on rigorous coupled-wave analysis. A new method to suppress the sidebands by cascading several GMRFs is presented and results in ∼48 dB suppression, exceeding that provided by an antireflective structure applied on individual GMRFs. To improve the stability and the compactness of this cascading system, substrate-mode cascaded GMRFs are studied, and preliminary experimental results achieved with ∼27 dB suppression for triple cascade. A new theoretical technique to obtain a square-like lineshape based on wavelength-offset cascading of asymmetrical lines is proposed for possible fabrication. Linewidth analysis based on the coupling-loss method is simplified to work for +1 and −1 diffracted orders and for a double-layer structure at normal incidence. The relatively simple analytical expression obtained is useful for understanding Linewidth variation with grating depth, fill factor, refractive index, waveguide thickness, and incident polarization. The null position of the standing-wave field at resonance is determined analytically; this is important when the GMRF structure is applied as a mirror in a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser. Finally, the local field enhancement associated with the guided-mode resonance effect is used to excite a second-harmonic wave in a nonlinear optical ionically self-assembled monolayer material that is applied on/in the GMRF structure. The second-harmonic output is detected with a Maker fringe setup with fundamental pulsed laser input at 1064 nm generating the resonance.