All-chalcogenide variable infrared filter

Abstract

We present the design, fabrication, characterization of spatially variable infrared filter and a demonstration of the filter as a simple infrared spectrometer. A varying photonic band gap filter which consists of thermally evaporated, high refractive index contrast amorphous chalcogenide glass multilayers, makes the structure suitable to be used as spectrometer. Due to graded thickness structure, the filter exhibits a position dependent stop band and a cavity mode ranging from 2 to 8 μm wavelengths. It is demonstrated that the filter can be used to detect absorption peaks of common gases in the cavity mode range of the filter. © 2009 SPIE.