Abstract

Diffractive optical elements have been of interest as far back as in 1872 where Lord Rayleigh described the fabrication of zone plates by contact copying ruled gratings onto various photorecording materials obtaining higher diffraction efficiency than that of the original. The introduction of the laser brought about a means for recording high pitched gratings as holograms. Recording materials with specific characteristics became important for rendering high diffraction efficiencies, ease of processing, good reproducibility, and high sensitivity and resolution. Combining this with low-cost lasers, detectors, and detector arrays provides new possibilities for optical sensors.

© 1994 IEEE