Diffraction gratings are used from micron to nanometer wavelengths as dispersing elements in optical instruments. At shorter wavelengths, crystals can be used as diffracting elements, but due to the 3D nature of the interaction with light are wavelength selective rather than wavelength dispersing. There is an urgent need to extend grating technology into the x-ray domain of wavelengths from 1 to 0.1 nm, but this requires the use of gratings that have a faceted surface in which the facet angles are very small, typically less than 1°. Small facet angles are also required in the extreme ultra-violet and soft x-ray energy ranges in free electron laser applications, in order to reduce power density below a critical damage threshold. In this work, we demonstrate a technique based on anisotropic etching of silicon designed to produce very small angle facets with a high degree of perfection.

One of the major challenges to the widespread adoption of plasmonic and nano-optical devices in real-life applications is the difficulty to mass-fabricate nano-optical antennas in parallel and reproducible fashion, and the capability to precisely place nanoantennas into devices with nanometer-scale precision. In this study, we present a solution to this challenge using the state-of-the-art ultraviolet nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) to fabricate functional optical transformers onto the core of an optical fiber in a single step, mimicking the 'campanile' near-field probes. Imprinted probes were fabricated using a custom-built imprinter tool with co-axial alignment capability with sub <100 nm position accuracy, followed by a metallization step. Scanning electron micrographs confirm high imprint fidelity and precision with a thin residual layer to facilitate efficient optical coupling between the fiber and the imprinted optical transformer. The imprinted optical transformer probe was used in an actual NSOM measurement performing hyperspectral photoluminescence mapping of standard fluorescent beads. The calibration scans confirmed that imprinted probes enable sub-diffraction limited imaging with a spatial resolution consistent with the gap size. This novel nano-fabrication approach promises a low-cost, high-throughput, and reproducible manufacturing of advanced nano-optical devices.