A multilevel phase fan-out diffractive optical element (DOE) has been developed and introduced into various kinds of laser materials processing such as drilling, cutting, welding, and soldering. The larger the number of arrayed spots the DOE generates on the surface of the workpiece, the more sensitive the intensity uniformity of the spots becomes to fabrication errors, which are the deviations between designed and fabricated surface microstructures. Errors in etch depth error have, in particular, a significant effect on the intensity uniformity. A new design method has been developed for increasing the tolerance to the etch depth error, and applied to the design of a 16-level phase 7 × 7 fan-out element. The result indicates uniformity less sensitive to etch depth error. The effect of a line width error due to the side etch introduced during a plasma etching process is also evaluated by computing high-resolution graphics data representing the phase of the DOE with the line width errors. The diffraction efficiency and intensity uniformity are measured for the fabricated DOE prototypes, and a comparison made between the calculated and measured properties shows good agreement. Mask alignment errors, the slant of sidewalls, and other fabrication errors are discussed further.
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