1. 1 Thin Film Optical Filter Fabrication and Characterization Adam Hammouda, Kalamazoo College Dr. David Shelton, UNLV 1

2. Overview Arbitrarily Modulating the Refractive Index of a Thin Film Offers Novel Optical Filtration Qualities Film Fabrication Performed with Reactive Magnetron Sputtering Deposition Target Materials –Si 3 N 4 (High Refractive Index) –SiO 2 (Low Refractive Index)

3. Experimental Details Base Pressure: 1.0 x 10 -6 torr RF Power Applied to Target: 150 Watts Silicon Target Microscope Slide Substrate Argon Environment O 2 and N 2 Reactive Gas (RG)

5. Analysis

7. N2N2 O2O2 N2N2 λ -2 (µm -2 ) 707 500 408 354 λ (nm)

8. λ = 532 nm λ= 633 nm

9. 9 Best results: minus filter optimized for low transmission at 800 nm

10. 10 Conclusion Successful fabrication of minus band -Design wavelength of 800 nm results in 5% Transmission It is not clear yet the nature of refractive index modulation -Further work must be done to establish this

11. 11 Acknowledgements Dr. David Shelton, UNLV Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, mentor Mrs. Mahin Behnia, UNLV Chemistry Dept., for help with UV-VIS spectrophotometer. Support from the REU program of the National Science Foundation under grant DMR-1005247 is gratefully acknowledged.