Achievement

COSI-IGERT participants in the Electrical Engineering department, collaborating with Chemistry experts, introduced a new fabrication method and polymeric material that can efficiently create cubic-millimeter sized optical devices with programmable, gradient index of refraction with arbitrary feature size. Index contrast of 0.1 is demonstrated, which is larger than typically achieved with femtosecond micromachining, and 20 times larger than commercial holographic photopolymers. The technique developed by the COSI-IGERT participants, could be used to fabricate arbitrary 3D refractive index devices such as photonic crystal waveguides, diffractive elements such as volume computer generated hologram’s and 3D integrated photonic devices. This achievement was first publicized during this reporting period on Light: Science & Applications, a publication by the Nature Publishing Group.