Liquid-crystal-polymer binary diffractive optical elements with a sub-micrometer feature size realized by a contact polarization holography.

In this Letter, a contact polarization holographic photoalignment method is proposed. In the holographic recording, a phase mask is contacted with a photoalignment film, making light carrying wavefront information interfere with reference light in the near-field region to realize polarization holographic pattern recording with a sub-micrometer feature size. The relevant theoretical derivation is given, and holographic recording of a 0.4 µm feature-size phase mask is realized. The proposed method can conveniently realize liquid-crystal binary diffractive optical elements with a sub-micrometer feature size. Off-axis diffraction can also be realized by superimposing the grating information by changing the angle between the substrate and the interference light.