High-frequency gratings for applications to microoptical ellipsometer/polarimeter systems

We report on experimental results which we conducted on manufactured microretarder arrays. The array consists of miniaturized retarder elements with different orientations of their fast axes. Diffractive phase retardation elements are chosen as microretarder elements since nanostructuring techniques such as electron beam lithography and successive reactive ion etching allow in principle an effortless way to arrange the microretarders as desired by the application. In this paper, we discuss the fabrication and the experimental results of manufactured retarder arrays. Furthermore, their use for potential applications in the fields of polarimetry is discussed.