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

• DOI: 10.1063/1.2358813
• Publication Date: 2006-10-03T15:13:04Z
• Authors: Jian Jim Wang; Lei Chen; Xiaoming Liu; Paul Sciortino; Feng Liu; Frank Walters; Xuegong Deng
• Keywords: 0103 physical sciences; 01 natural sciences

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 200nm 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.