Potential Applications of Circular Dammann Gratings

This project will explore novel potential applications of the good results obtained from the researchers’ project on “Novel Applications of Diffractive Optical Elements in Optical Fibre Communications”. Apart from demonstrating for the first time the feasibility of a 2D optical beam coupling into a packaged V-groove 2x2 fibre array using Dammann gratings for fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) applications, they have also reported a novel design of a circular Damman grating (CDG) in which a circular pattern of equal intensities can be produced at different diffraction orders with high efficiency similar to a linear Dammann grating producing a rectangular pattern. They therefore propose to extend this research as the 2D CDG will provide not only simple, low-cost, and compact configuration, but also comparable high-precision measurements of optical components and system parameters. They have recently reported a novel technique for lens focal-length measurements achieving accuracy better than 0.5% using their CDG fabricated by e-beam direct writing technique. They will explore more potential applications of CDG in a number of interdisciplinary areas such as recording of digital holograms, micromachining of microoptical elements, tomography of 3D objects, and even trapping of biological cells.