Shapeshifting diffractive optical devices

TL;DR

This paper introduces reconfigurable diffractive optical elements created with a novel lithography process on erasable photoresist, enabling dynamic optical device shaping and reconfiguration in the light path.

Contribution

It presents a new lithographic method for fabricating shapeshifting diffractive optical devices that can be written, erased, and reconfigured directly in the optical path.

Findings

Successfully fabricated complex diffractive gratings with arbitrary vectors.

Demonstrated a reconfigurable diffractive lens that changes imaging parameters.

Enabled dynamic optical device reconfiguration without permanent fabrication.

Abstract

In optical devices like diffraction gratings and Fresnel lenses, light wavefront is engineered through the structuring of device surface morphology, within thicknesses comparable to the light wavelength. Fabrication of such diffractive optical elements involves highly accurate multi-step lithographic processes that in fact set into stone both the device morphology and optical functionality. In this work, we introduce shapeshifting diffractive optical elements directly written on an erasable photoresist. We first develop a lithographic configuration that allows writing/erasing cycles of aligned optical elements directly in the light path. Then, we show the realization of complex diffractive gratings with arbitrary combinations of grating vectors. Finally, we demonstrate a shapeshifting diffractive lens that is reconfigured in the light-path in order to change the imaging parameters of an optical system.