Guidelines for 1D-periodic surface microstructures for antireflective lenses

Antireflective properties of one-dimensional periodically microstructured lens surfaces (refractive index 1.5) are studied with the Green's function surface integral equation method, and design guidelines are obtained. Special attention is given to the requirement of having practically all incident light transmitted in the fundamental transmission diffraction order. The effect of the presence of higher transmission diffraction orders is studied to determine if such more easily fabricated structures will be useful. The decrease of optimum fill factor of a periodic array of subwavelength ridges with structure period is explained as a waveguiding effect. Near-fields are calculated illustrating standing-wave interference and waveguiding effects for ridge structures, and adiabatic field transformation for tapered structures, including evanescent near-fields in in- and out-coupling regions. The antireflective properties of tapered geometries are considered for a wide range of angles of light incidence. It is found that while the reflection can be very small this rarely implies high transmission into the fundamental transmission diffraction order when higher-order transmission diffraction orders exist. This leads to the guideline that for visible and normally incident light the surface structure period should not be larger than similar to 300 nm, and a smaller period is needed in the case of oblique light incidence. (C)2010 Optical Society of America