Low-cost method of fabricating large-aperture, high efficiency, Fresnel diffractive membrane optic using a modified moiré technique

To reduce the cost and achieve high diffraction efficiency, a modified moiré technique for fabricating a large-aperture multi-level Fresnel membrane optic by a novel design of alignment marks is proposed. The modified moiré fringes vary more sensitively with the actual misalignment. Hence, the alignment accuracy is significantly improved. Using the proposed method, a 20 μm thick, four-level Fresnel diffractive polyimide membrane optic with a 200 mm diameter is made, which exhibits over 62% diffraction efficiency into the +1 order, and an efficiency root mean square of 0.051.