Suppression of circular Bragg phenomenon in chiral sculptured thin films produced with simultaneous rocking and rotation of substrate during serial bideposition

摘要

Chiral sculptured thin films (STFs) produced by substrate rotation during physical vapor deposition exhibitthe circular Bragg phenomenon, whereby normally incident left- and right-circularly polarized plane waves arediscriminated in a spectral regime called the circular Bragg regime. Theory had predicted that substrate rocking,in synchrony with substrate rotation, during deposition, could suppress the propensity to exhibit the circularBragg phenomenon. Therefore, ZnSe chiral STFs were fabricated with/without substrate rocking, and theirtransmittance spectrums for incident linearly and circularly polarized plane waves were measured. With sufficientrocking amplitude, the discrimination between incident left- and right-circularly polarized light nearly vanished,whereas a Bragg phenomenon for all normally incident plane waves was observed. Thus, chiral STF technologycan be used to produce both ordinary and circular-polarization Bragg filters.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.