Preparation and measurement of subwavelength bilayer metal wire grid polarizers on flexible plastic substrates

This paper presents a process for the fabrication of subwavelength bilayer metal wire grid polarizers and describes the performance characterization of polarizers that were produced using the proposed method. These polarizers have a period of 278 nm and were fabricated on flexible plastic substrates using nanoimprint lithography followed by an aluminum deposition process. Transmission efficiency in excess of 0.55 and an extinction ratio of more than 32 dB were achieved in the visible range when the aluminum layer thickness of the polarizer was 70 nm. When a polarization analyzer with a six-channel sensor prototype was tested, an average error of 0.2002°was obtained, with a maximum error of 1.105°and a standard deviation of 0.7255°. The proposed fabrication method will be suitable for many applications in optics, including the manufacture of compound eye structures.