30-nm-wide aluminum nanowire grid for ultrahigh contrast and transmittance polarizers made by UV-nanoimprint lithography

Both high contrast and high transmittance are preferred for optical polarizers. To achieve high transmittance for aluminum nanowire-grid polarizers, a narrow linewidth is required. In this letter, aluminum nanowire-grid polarizers with 30-nm-wide linewidth and 200 nm depth were fabricated by UV-nanoimprint lithography, which leads to ultrahigh transmittance. To achieve a high contrast, the authors fabricated the 30-nm-wide aluminum nanowire structures on both sides of the glass wafers. An extremely high contrast up to 10 000:1 was achieved, in the visible range, along with good transmittance of 83%-87% for the double-side aluminum nanowire-grid polarizers. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.