Blazed gratings with both controllable blaze angle and anti-blaze angle fabricated by using a twice oblique ion beam etching method

Abstract

A twice oblique ion beam etching method is proposed to fabricate triangular blazed gratings that have controllable both blaze angle and anti-blaze angle. The anti-blaze angle is controlled by first obliquely etching the photoresist mask to obtain an asymmetrical trapezoidal grating, one sidewall of which then evolves into the anti-blaze facet in the second etch step. The blaze angle is controlled by obliquely etching the asymmetrical trapezoidal grating to obtain a triangular blazed grating. We show the key process steps of the method by fabricating a blazed grating with the blaze angle of 20.9° and the anti-blaze angle of 89.0°. The method is verified not only to increase the anti-blaze angle to near 90°, but also have a good tolerance against over-etching.