Solid immersion lens at the aplanatic condition for enhancing the spectral bandwidth of a waveguide grating coupler
Abstract
We report a technique to substantially boost the spectral bandwidth of a conventional waveguide grating coupler by using a solid immersion cylindrical lens at the aplanatic condition to create a highly anamorphic beam and reach a much larger numerical aperture, thus enhancing the spectral bandwidth of a free-space propagating optical beam coupled into a single-mode planar integrated optical waveguide (IOW). Our experimental results show that the broadband IOW spectrometer thus created almost doubles (94% enhancement) the coupled spectral bandwidth of a conventional configuration. To exemplify the benefits made possible by the developed approach, we applied the technique to the broadband spectroscopic characterization of a protein submonolayer; our experimental data confirm the enhanced spectral bandwidth (around 380–nm) and illustrate the potentials of the developed technology. Besides the enhanced bandwidth, the broadband coupler of the single-mode IOW spectrometer described here is more robust and user-friendly than those previously reported in the literature and is expected to have an important impact on spectroscopic studies of surface-adsorbed molecular layers and surface phenomena.
Additional Information
© 2010 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. Paper 100554R received Jul. 8, 2010; revised manuscript received Oct. 13, 2010; accepted for publication Oct. 15, 2010; published online Dec. 7, 2010. This project was funded by the NIH (award RR022864 to S.B.M.) and the NSF (award DBI-0352449 to S.B.M.).Attached Files
Published - Pereira2010p12700Opt_Eng.pdf
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC3092502
- Eprint ID
- 22620
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20110303-095334065
- RR022864
- NIH
- DBI-0352449
- NSF
- Created
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2011-03-03Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field