Student: Erik Krous ekrous@engr.colostate.edu
Advisor: Dr. Carmen Menoni
The goal of the project is to produce uniform multilayer oxide reflective diffraction gratings, for a chirped-pulse amplified Ti:Sapphire laser system, that are 4" x 9" in area. The challenges of the project include: (1) measuring the thickness uniformity of the large-area multilayer coating and (2) the system used in growing the oxide multilayers (a Veeco Spector Ion Beam Deposition System) is not designed for sputtering onto such large areas. Please see the "Final Report" or "E-Days Poster" link to learn more about the project; or at least the abstract and introduction to perhaps gain a better feel for the project.
In the final stage of the project, I developed a system that utilizes an optical spectrum analyzer (OSA) to characterize an optical coating. The goal was to be able to measure the thickness of the coating using its transmission spectrum at various points on the coating surface with the OSA, which measures optical power as a function of wavelength. Basically, the system is a spectrophotometer.
Acknowledgments: I acknowledge my advisor, Dr. Carmen Menoni, for providing the opportunity to work and learn at the Engineering Research Center and for her aid and patience on this project. Her direction and foresight drove the project. I also wish to thank Dr. Dinesh Patel who has been invaluable in helping and mentoring me, not only on every step of this project, but on all endeavors I have undertaken at the ERC. Thanks also go to the undergraduate and graduate students whose hard work sustains this and all other projects at this facility and to the NSF, who financially supports the EUV research.
A schematic and photograph of the OSA spectrophotometer system:
Date of final website update: May 8, 2007