High-resolution two-dimensional and three-dimensional modeling of wire grid polarizers and micropolarizer arrays

Dmitry Vorobiev; Zoran Ninkov

doi:10.1117/1.OE.56.11.113113

29 November 2017 High-resolution two-dimensional and three-dimensional modeling of wire grid polarizers and micropolarizer arrays

Dmitry Vorobiev, Zoran Ninkov

Author Affiliations +

Optical Engineering, Vol. 56, Issue 11, 113113 (November 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.56.11.113113

Abstract

Recent advances in photolithography allowed the fabrication of high-quality wire grid polarizers for the visible and near-infrared regimes. In turn, micropolarizer arrays (MPAs) based on wire grid polarizers have been developed and used to construct compact, versatile imaging polarimeters. However, the contrast and throughput of these polarimeters are significantly worse than one might expect based on the performance of large area wire grid polarizers or MPAs, alone. We investigate the parameters that affect the performance of wire grid polarizers and MPAs, using high-resolution two-dimensional and three-dimensional (3-D) finite-difference time-domain simulations. We pay special attention to numerical errors and other challenges that arise in models of these and other subwavelength optical devices. Our tests show that simulations of these structures in the visible and near-IR begin to converge numerically when the mesh size is smaller than ∼4 nm. The performance of wire grid polarizers is very sensitive to the shape, spacing, and conductivity of the metal wires. Using 3-D simulations of micropolarizer “superpixels,” we directly study the cross talk due to diffraction at the edges of each micropolarizer, which decreases the contrast of MPAs to ∼200∶1.

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Dmitry Vorobiev and Zoran Ninkov "High-resolution two-dimensional and three-dimensional modeling of wire grid polarizers and micropolarizer arrays," Optical Engineering 56(11), 113113 (29 November 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.56.11.113113

Received: 24 May 2017; Accepted: 13 November 2017; Published: 29 November 2017

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KEYWORDS

Polarizers

3D modeling

Computer simulations

Aluminum

Polarization

Optical engineering

Polarimetry

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