There are many companies making optical components, the following is a selection
who have disclosed that they use imprint.
Nano-opto is a venture funded start up who make sub wavelength polarizer devices by
imprint as shown at www.nanoopto.com.
Heptagon
A group at CSEM in Switzerland have reported on a number of optical components. The
group was spun off into a stand alone company Heptagon. They use a customized
Suss tool, and have recently announced purchase of a tool from EVG. They
manufacture a wide range of optical components described on their web site www.
heptagon.com. Heptagon have developed a functional material process that passes
the Telcordia specification.
Omron are using home made imprinter to make components for cell phone displays.
OVD Kinegram manufacture security film with holograms using hot embossing
described at www.kinegram.com
LG Electronics have used UV and thermal imprint to fabricate AR surfaces, planar
waveguides, dual height gratings, and a ring resonator (Lee 2005).
Reflexite has thermal imprint capacity used for prisms, microlenses, and moths eye.
www.reflexite.com
Autotech, in the UK, has been purchased by McDermid and supply UV imprinted
structures on thin film in widths over 25 inches. www.autotech.com
Wavefront technology shows imprinted moths eye structures on their web site.
Spectratec make embossed film with fresnel lens and holographic effects http://www.
spectratek.net/productlines/index.html
PRODUCTS
Optical products can be grouped by critical dimension into;
- Refractive
- Diffractive
- Subwavelength
Functional components are common.
REFRACTIVE
Microptics
A team at Fraunhofer Inst. built micro-optics in Ormocer materials.
Fresnel lens have been fabricated by thermal imprint using Si molds at Nalux in Japan
(Tsubouchi 2003).
A team from U. Wuppertal have shown micro-lenses (Sheer 2005)
Heptagon (Rossi 2006) have also reported on lens arrays.
Scott (2006) from Reflexite described imprint of prisms and lenses on flexible film.
Waveguides
Waveguides have been fabricated by imprint (Kalveram 1997) and (Paatzsch 1997).
Waveguides were fabricated in PS on SiO by the U Wuppertal team and their
performance measured (Zankovych 2002).
Nanoopto have reported making large area (4”) achromatic optical wave plates. These
were manufactured by UV nanoimprint based on a single layer spin coat resist (Wang
2005).
Polymer waveguides have been reported by a team at DuPont, very demanding
materials requirement.
UV imprinting of waveguides on active silic germania sputtered thin film described by (
Sebastiani 2006).
Thick hybrid silica zirconia sol gel film were imprinted for single step fabrication of
channel waveguides (He 2006) from Nangyang Tech Univ.
Wavelength demultiplexer, waveguides, waveguides with integrated mirror and
switches all fabricated by embossing were described in 3 papers by the E. Lee group
at Inha U., in Korea.
Sessions at Photonics West 2006 were focused on optical interconnect, board level
and on chip optics, they described a need or an emitter on Si.
DIFFRACTIVE
Holograms
Holograms are the prototypical security marker and have been fabricated in volume by
thermal imprint at OVD Kinegram, and Spectratech.
Diffractive optical elements
Heptagon makes DOE's for Sony lenses (Heptagon 2005)
Photonic crystals
Polymer photonic crystals have been fabricated by thermal imprint, and their optical
properties described. (Seekamp 2002) and (Choi 2004).
Defect free photonic crystals have been reported by a team at Riken (Okinanka 2005)
Two polymer microtransfer imprint described by a team from Iowa State U (Lee 2006).
Beam splitters
Heptagon makes beam splitters for Micronic lithography systems. They can supply
beam splitters with different fan outs; 1 to 2,3,5, and 1 to 3x3 array (Heptagon 2005).
Gratings
Classically fabricated by replication into epoxy, and then metallized by low angle
deposition. The masters are made by interferometry.
Gratings with 500 nm l/s for microspectrometers have been fabricated (Traut 2000).
The U Wuppertal team have made a 25 squ mm 800 nm pitch grating (Seekamp
2002).
Heptagon makes gratings for a Leica theodolite lenses (Heptagon 2005)
The University Lund team have demonstrated a nanoimprint fabricated Si/SiO2 tunable
gratings (Maximov 2005).
SUBWAVELENGTH
AR Coatings
Moths eye surfaces are of interest as high efficiency AR surfaces that should be ideal
for imprint.
Imprinted AR surface have been made (David 2002)
Subwavelength ripple formation on Dielectric and metals from RWTH Aachen
(Gottman 2006).
Moths eye films have been reported by Reflexite, Autotype, and Wavefront Technology
on their web sites.
Polarizers
High efficiency polarizers are used in LCD projection displays.
The Chou group fabricated a 85 nm l/s polarizer by thermal imprint (Wang 1999-1), and
a reflective polarizer (Yu 2000).
ITRI reported on polarizers made using drop dispense UV imprint down to 75 nm l/s
(Kuo 2004).
LG have reported a 50 nm l/s polarizer with an extinction coefficient of 2000 fabricated
by thermal imprint (Lee 2005).
Surface plasmon mirrors
Plasmon mirros have been fabricated by imprint, a metal grid with 100 nm holes (Lei
2003)
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