Manufacturing and characterizing of all-dielectric band-pass filters for the short-wave infrared region

摘要

Besides the typical channels in the visible and near infrared spectrum, optical remote sensing of the earth from air and space utilizes also several channels in the short-wave infrared spectrum from 1000 nm to 3000 nm. Thin-film optical filters are applied to select these channels, but the application of classical multiple-cavity band-pass filters is impossible. Because of their additional blocking elements they are disallowed due to geometrical or other non-optical reasons. Within the sensitivity region of an MCT detector as typical detector device, the selection and blocking of radiation by the filter has to be provided by a single multilayer system. The spectral region of the S WIR as well as blocking width and depth require necessarily designs with overall thicknesses of more than 20 μm, with layer numbers up to 100. SiO_2 and TiO_2 were used as thin-film materials deposited with reactive e-beam evaporation under ion assistance in a Leybold SyrusPro box coater. A special challenge was the thickness measurement of the thin films by an optical broadband monitoring device in the visible range. The results of manufacturing and characterizing of such filters are presented by three examples for the center wavelengths of 1375 nm, 1610 nm, and 2190 nm.