High efficiency and scalable fabrication of fresnel zone plates using holographic femtosecond pulses

To meet the growing demand for photonic integration and device miniaturization, planar diffractive Fresnel zone plates (FZPs) are widely applied in integrated optical systems. However, challenges remain in fabricating FZPs with high efficiency and satisfying the requirement for cross-scale fabrication. This paper details a high efficiency method for fabricating ultrathin FZPs of different scales on metal films by using holographic femtosecond lasers. The FZPs are split into a series of element patterns that are printed in order by using corresponding modulated femtosecond pulses. The fabricated FZPs are spliced by the printed element structures with no FZP size limitation in theory. FZPs with an area varying across three orders of magnitude are presented to demonstrate the capability of cross-scale fabrication. The fabricated FZPs possess an excellent broadband focusing and imaging ability in the visible spectrum. Furthermore, the fabrication of other functional ultrathin lenses, such as axial multifocal zone plates, petal-like zone plates, and FZP arrays, is described, revealing the wide potential for the flexible and scalable fabrication method in on-chip integrated optical systems.

Automated summary

This paper discusses a high efficiency method for fabricating ultrathin FZPs of different scales on metal films using holographic femtosecond lasers. The study demonstrates the capability of cross-scale fabrication and presents the excellent imaging ability of the fabricated FZPs in the visible spectrum.