Blazed diffraction gratings produced by ion bombardment of pre-patterned solid surfaces

We propose a method of producing high quality blazed gratings and carry out simulations of it. By combining the near perfect periodicity produced by conventional lithographic methods with the tendency of ion sputtering to produce terraced topographies, this fabrication procedure could produce highly ordered, faceted surfaces on amorphous materials. Our approach differs from previous uses of ion bombardment to fabricate blazed gratings, and has the unique advantage that it could be used as the initial step in the fabrication of high efficiency multilayer-coated blazed gratings. Our numerical investigations of the relevant equations of motion demonstrate that our method produces efficient blazed gratings for a broad range of parameter values. We also develop concrete predictions regarding the optimal implementation of our proposed procedure, and show that high quality blazed gratings can emerge even if additional linear or nonlinear terms are present in the equation of motion.