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Imaging with diffractive axicons rapidly milled on sapphire by femtosecond laser ablation

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Abstract

Fabrication of large area (sub-1 cm cross-section) micro-optical components in a short period of time (~ 10 min) and with lesser number of processing steps is highly desirable and cost-effective. In the recent years, femtosecond laser fabrication technology has revolutionized the field of manufacturing by offering the above capabilities. In this study, a fundamental diffractive optical element, binary axicon–axicon with two phase or amplitude levels, has been designed in three configurations namely conventional axicon, photon sieve axicon (PSA) and sparse PSA and directly milled onto a sapphire substrate. The fabrication results revealed that a single pulse burst fabrication can produce a flatter and smoother profile than pulse overlapped fabrication which gives rise to surface damage and increased roughness. The fabricated elements were processed in IsoPropyl alcohol and potassium hydroxide to remove debris and redeposited amorphous sapphire. An incoherent illumination was used for optical testing of the components and a non-linear optical filter was used for cleaning the noisy images generated by the diffractive optical elements.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

PSA:

Photon sieve axicon

DOE:

Diffractive optical elements

FWHM:

Full width at half maximum

NLR:

Non-linear reconstruction

IPA:

Isopropyl alcohol

LED:

Light emitting diode

DOF:

Depth of focus

M:

Molar

KOH:

Potassium hydroxide

SEM:

Scanning electron microscope

UV:

Ultraviolet

IR:

Infrared

FBMS:

Fixed beam movable stage

NIR:

Near infrared

NA:

Numerical aperture

PSO:

Position sensitive output

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Workshop of Photonics, Ltd. for femtosecond laser fabrication system acquired via technology transfer project. We acknowledge funding for the Nanolab by Swinburne University of Technology (SUT). DS is grateful for support via Honors and MH via PhD programs at SUT.

Funding

ARC LP190100505 is acknowledged for funding.

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Author notes

  1. Daniel Smith, Soon Hock Ng and Molong Han contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Science, Optical Sciences Centre and ARC Training Centre in Surface Engineering for Advanced Materials (SEAM), Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC, 3122, Australia

    Daniel Smith, Soon Hock Ng, Molong Han, Tomas Katkus, Vijayakumar Anand & Saulius Juodkazis

  2. School of Science, Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC, 3122, Australia

    Karl Glazebrook

  3. School of Materials and Chemical Technology, Tokyo Tech World Research Hub Initiative (WRHI), Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1, Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8550, Japan

    Saulius Juodkazis

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  1. Daniel Smith
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Contributions

Light matter interaction and dynamics conceptualization—SJ; fabrication—DS, SHN, MH and TK; characterisation—MH, DS, SHN, VA and TK KOH etching—SHN, VA and DS; simulation—VA and DS; optical testing—VA, SHN and DS; manuscript writing—VA and SJ; review, editing and proof reading—all the authors; project guidance—KG, SJ; resources—SJ; funding—SJ.

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Correspondence to Vijayakumar Anand.

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Smith, D., Ng, S.H., Han, M. et al. Imaging with diffractive axicons rapidly milled on sapphire by femtosecond laser ablation. Appl. Phys. B 127, 154 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-021-07701-x

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