Characterization of the surface relief of film diffractive optical elements

The surface relief of film reflective diffractive optical elements (DOE) has been characterized by atomic force microscopy. The elements under study were fabricated using a variety of microfabrication techniques: traditional laser recoding of reflection rainbow holograms, Dot matrix and Kinemax technologies, and e-beam lithography. The influence of these technologies on the relief characteristics has been estimated. It has been shown that the choice of such technologies is defined by the necessity to obtain corresponding optical characteristics of diffractive optical elements.