Create high quality optical gratings with DPSS lasers designed for precision mastering
Optical grating mastering is the critical first step in producing high-performance diffraction gratings. These gratings consist of microscopic, closely spaced parallel lines or grooves etched onto an optical surface, designed to manipulate light with extreme precision.
Diffraction gratings are essential in a wide range of applications, including photonics, spectroscopy, holography, imaging, metrology, and sensing.
In the mastering process, an ultra-precise pattern of grooves is created on a substrate. This master grating serves as the template for replicating the grating onto other materials in mass production. The performance of the final diffraction grating is directly tied to the accuracy and consistency of the master. Even the slightest variations in groove spacing, depth, or alignment drastically impacts the grating’s optical properties — affecting effectiveness, efficiency, and resolution.
Skylark Lasers deliver repeatable precision for optical grating mastering
The Skylark Lasers NX series of single frequency DPSS lasers offer ultra-low noise < 0.1% RMS, and ultra-narrow linewidths < 0.5 MHz while maintaining market leading output powers from a compact form factor.
Excellent beam quality
A TEM00 Gaussian beam ensures sharp, well-defined features in the gratings.
Power stability
Prevents variations in groove depth or uniformity to produce high quality, consistent gratings.
Narrow linewidth
Drives precision in groove placement and accurate wavelength separation.
Wavelength stability
Ensures consistent groove spacing to avoid performance degradation in diffraction gratings.
Single frequency DPSS lasers produce high resolution optical gratings
Skylark NX lasers power applications in several optical grating mastering processes due to their ultra-stable output, coherence, and precision. Our lasers are essential for creating high quality optical gratings using various mastering techniques and applications:
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Grating-based sensors
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Fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs)
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Diffractive optical elements (DOEs)
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Diffraction grating fabrication
Linear gratings
Linear gratings consist of parallel lines or grooves etched at uniform intervals. Their performance depends on the groove spacing and depth.
Crossed (checkerboard) gratings
Crossed or checkerboard gratings are formed by two sets of linear gratings etched perpendicularly to each other, creating a 2D grid that manipulates light in two dimensions.
Blazed gratings (symmetric, sinusoidal)
Blazed gratings have grooves shaped into a specific angle, optimized for directing light into a preferred diffraction order. Symmetric blazed gratings have evenly spaced, sharp grooves, while sinusoidal gratings have a wave-like structure.
Ultra-stable diffraction gratings for a wide range of demanding applications
By leveraging the precise and stable output of Skylark NX single-frequency DPSS lasers, these various types of diffractive gratings can be repeatedly fabricated with high accuracy, ensuring optimal performance across a wide range of applications:
WDM systems are typically used in fiber-optic communications and rely on diffraction gratings to separate and combine the different wavelengths, enabling multiple data channels to be transmitted over a single optical fiber.
To manufacture gratings for WDM systems, the Skylark NX series of lasers uses ultra-high precision to create highly accurate groove patterns with consistent spacing. This is critical for separating closely spaced wavelengths in WDM systems.
Long-term wavelength stability and low phase noise and intensity help avoid crosstalk between channels, while high-power enables the rapid production of the fine, closely spaced gratings required for WDM.
Optical filters are used to transmit or block specific wavelengths of light, allowing only certain wavelengths to pass through. They are critical in applications like spectroscopy, telecommunications, and laser systems where precise wavelength control is required.
Beam shaping modifies the spatial profile of a laser beam - to focus, collimate, or redistribute light intensity. Diffractive optical elements (DOEs), such as beam-shaping gratings, are used to manipulate the beam for specific applications like material processing, optical trapping, and holography.
2D spectral filtering involves the use of crossed diffraction gratings to control light in two dimensions, allowing for precise spectral separation in both the x and y directions. This is commonly used in applications such as metrology and surface inspection, flow cytometry, LIDAR, and sensing.