Aluminum Nanowire Polarizing Grids: Fabrication and Analysis

摘要

We have produced aluminum wire grids with 33 nm periodicity using a thin film of a self-assembling cylinder forming diblock copolymer as a template. These grids, supported on fused quartz wafers, function as transmission polarizers for visible and near-ultraviolet lights and are a thin design, compared to commercially available polarization prisms. Their polarization efficiency is measured to be near 50% in the visible. Quantitative comparison with a new theoretical analysis of such wire grids indicates that they should perform well into the far UV. This analysis also explains a reversal in polarization direction at short wavelengths which we observe in our specimens. This is an expanded version of a previous paper.