Birefringent Thin Films and Polarizing Elements

468 Pages·2015·11.193 MB·English

by  Martin W McCall, Ian J Hodgkinson, Qihong Wu

Birefringent Thin Films
and Polarizing Elements
2nd Edition
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Birefringent Thin Films
Polarizing Elements
and
2nd Edition
Martin W McCall
Imperial College London, UK
Ian J Hodgkinson
University of Otago, New Zealand
Qihong Wu
Finisar Australia, Australia
Imperial College Press
ICP
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Published by
Imperial College Press
57 Shelton Street
Covent Garden
London WC2H 9HE
Distributed by
World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224
USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601
UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
BIREFRINGENT THIN FILMS AND POLARIZING ELEMENTS
2nd Edition
Copyright © 2015 by Imperial College Press
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval
system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher.
For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance
Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy
is not required from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-78326-535-0
Printed in Singapore
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To Estralita, Jenny and Qiong Zhu Hu
v
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Preface to the Second Edition
The second edition of our book has afforded the opportunity for the au-
thors, which now includes Martin McCall, to incorporate some significant
developments since publication of the first edition. The most significant of
these is the progress in both the simulation and experimental fabrication
of chiral or handed media based on the progressive rotation of birefrin-
gent axes. Moreover,it has been increasinglyappreciatedthatNature has,
with millions of years of evolution acting to her advantage, beaten us to
it. A number of species of beetle show brilliant iridescence that on closer
examination turn out to be one of the few naturally occurring sources of
circularly polarized light. The exocuticle of some scarab beetles have an
optically chiralarchitecturethatselectivelyreflectslightofthe samehand-
edness. A new chapter on Handed Media has been included that discusses
someoftherichnano-architecturesthathavebeendevelopedbasedaround
such helical media. Although in practice chiral structures occur through
successive layer-by-layer rotation of the birefringent axes, considerable in-
sightcanbe obtainedby consideringa handedmediumto occurasa result
of a continuous rotation of the eigen-axes. Applying this continuum limit
to Maxwell’s equations leads to some remarkable analytic techniques that
are described in another new chapter, titled Continuum Methods.
Chiral media are now embedded in other parts of the text. Chapter
4 includes a description of calculating the characteristic matrix of chi-
ral coatings, Chapter 7 includes details on deposition of tilted columnar
and normal columnar chiral nano-structures, Chapter 11 shows how to
calculated effective (Herpin) indices for chiral media, and Chapter 18 on
Coating Architectures considers the experimental monitoring of random
chiral media.
Another advance covered in the second edition is the invention of
serial bideposition asameansofnormalisingcolumnargrowth. Thisresults
vii
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viii Birefringent Thin Films and Polarizing Elements
in enhanced form birefringence, and has increased the breadth of possible
structuresthroughprogrammablestepwisesubstraterotationduringdepo-
sition. Indeed, many of the artificial chiral media are produced using this
technique.
TheToolboxhasbeensignificantlyexpandedtoincludeanumberofnew
functions to facilitate calculating the response of various structures. The
complete set of MATLAB files comprising the Toolbox can be downloaded
from http://www.worldscientific.com/r/P962-supp. This will enable the
reader to reproduce for him/herself many of the examples covered in the
book, to his/her own design endeavours.
In preparing this second edition, we have taken the opportunity to re-
orderandeditmuchofthematerialofthefirstedition,andtocorrectsome
typographicalerrors. ThanksareduetoIanCarterforprovidingthebeetle
images for the book cover.
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Contents
Preface to the Second Edition vii
List of Figures xix
List of Tables xxvii
Glossary xxix
1. Introduction 1
1.1 Structural Classification of Crystals . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Optical Classification of Crystals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Structure of Birefringent Films . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 Optical Classification of Birefringent Films . . . . . . . . 4
1.5 Layout of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Part 1. Propagation in Biaxial Media 9
2. PropagationEquations 11
2.1 Maxwell’s Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 Propagationin Free Space. Mathematical Methods . . . . 12
2.2.1 SI units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3 Propagationin Isotropic Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4 Propagationin Anisotropic Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.5 Energy Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.6 Notation for Biaxial Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.6.1 Material axes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.6.2 Propagationaxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
ix