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Published December 2010 | Published
Journal Article Open

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.).

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