Color filter incorporating a subwavelength patterned grating in poly silicon

A color filter based on a subwavelength patterned grating in poly silicon was proposed and realized on a quartz substrate. It was produced by utilizing the laser interference lithography technique to feature wide effective area compared to the costly e-beam lithography. An oxide layer was introduced on top of the silicon grating layer as a mask to facilitate the silicon-etching and to enhance the filtering selectivity as well. The structural parameters for the device include the grating pitch and height of 450 nm and 100 nm respectively, the silicon stripe width of 150 nm, and the oxide thickness of 200 nm. The fabricated device offered a spectral response suitable for a blue color filter, exhibiting the center wavelength of similar to 460 nm, the bandwidth similar to 90 nm and the peak transmission 40%. The positional dependence of its performance was examined to find the effective area of 3 x 3 mm(2), where the variation in the relative transmission efficiency and in the center wavelength was less than 10% and 2 nm respectively. Finally, the influence of the angle of the incident beam upon the transfer characteristics of the device was investigated to reveal that the rate of change in the relative transmission was equivalent to about 1.5%/degree. (C) 2008 Optical Society of America.