Daisuke SAKAI¹, Takashi FUKUDA^2*, and Kenji HARADA¹

¹Department of Computer Science, Kitami Institute of Technology, Kitami, Hokkaido 090-8507, Japan
²Photonics Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8565, Japan

(Received May 11, 2012; Accepted August 13, 2013)

We propose a new method of increasing the diffraction efficiency of a glass substrate onto which a grating structure has been transferred by corona-charging treatment. The first-order diffraction efficiency was successfully increased by at least 100-fold by a simple low-cost process in which an aqueous solution prepared from poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and glucose was spin-coated on the glass substrate. As the solution dried, the spin-coated film formed a periodic surface relief grating with the period corresponding to that of the grating transferred to the glass substrate. The period and depth of the relief structure were 50 and 1.4 μm, respectively. The depth of the relief structure strongly depended on the concentrations of PVA and glucose in the solution. Under our experimental conditions, a high first-order diffraction efficiency was obtained when the PVA concentration was 7.5–8 wt % and the glucose concentration was 30–45 wt %.

Key words: glass, corona charging, poly(vinyl alcohol), glucose, surface relief grating

^*E-mail address: t-fukuda@aist.go.jp