Reducing Rowland ghosts in diffraction gratings by dynamic exposure near-field holography.

Near-field holography (NFH) combined with electron beam lithography (EBL)-written phase masks is a promising method for the rapid realization of diffraction gratings with high resolution and high accuracy in line density distribution. We demonstrate a dynamic exposure method in which the grating substrate is shifted during pattern transfer. This reduces the effects of stitching errors, resulting in the decreased intensity of the optical stray light (i.e., Rowland ghosts). We demonstrate the intensity suppression of ghosts by 60%. This illustrates the potential for dynamic NFH to suppress undesirable periodic patterns from phase masks and alleviate the stitching errors induced by EBL. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America