Highly angle tolerant filter incorporating serially cascaded a-Si based etalons and its application to a compact receiver

A highly angle tolerant spectral filter has been implemented taking advantage of three-stage serially concatenated resonators in dielectric films, each of which involves a high-index cavity in a-Si, sandwiched with a pair of SiO2 films. For the constituent etalons, the free spectral range is individually adjusted by differentiating the thickness of the cavity, so that a primary infrared pass-band could be attained to present enhanced roll-off characteristics in conjunction with an appropriate bandwidth. The a-Si cavities relating to the three etalons are selected to be 117, 234, and 468-nm thick, while the SiO2 layer is uniformly 150-nm thick. The filter is actually created on a silica glass substrate, by alternately depositing SiO2 and a-Si films. The observed center wavelength, bandwidth, and peak transmission efficiency are about 900 nm, 120 nm, and over 90%, respectively, for normal incidence. In response to an angle change amounting to 60°, the relative wavelength shift and the variation in peak transmission become barely 0.03 and 8%, respectively. Finally, a detecting cell is constructed by integrating the prepared filter with a photodiode, thus rendering a 3-dB angular bandwidth of 90°. By adequately arranging three detecting cells in a fixture, a compact, portable optical receiver could then be constructed. For incoming collimated light at = 905 nm, the infrared receiver exhibits an extended 3-dB angular acceptance as large as 160°.