Numerical analysis of blazed wire-grid polarizer for plasmonic enhancement

We analyze the characteristics of plasmonics-based enhancement of a wire-grid polarizer (WGP) by rigorous coupledwave analysis (RCWA). We consider blazed WGP (bWGP) for improvement of polarimetric performance based on plasmonic momentum-matching in the metal/dielectric interface. The analysis used a model of triangular wire-grids approximated with five graded layers of identical thickness. We have compared the performance to that of a conventional WGP (cWGP) with a corresponding lamellar grating shape profile. As a performance measure, we calculated transmittance (TR) and extinction ratio (ER). It was found that TR in both cases tends to decrease monotonically with a longer period (Λ). The maximum TR of bWGPs is lower than cWGPs. On the other hand, maximum ER of bWGPs is much higher than that of cWGPs, particularly at a longer period, with an extinction peak peaked at Λ = 800 nm. For cWGPs, an extinction peak is observed at Λ = 200 nm with comparable enhancement (∼42 dB). We have also computed relative TR (RTR) and relative ER (RER) for assessment of performance relative to cWGP. RTR decreases slowly in a manner similar to TR, however, RER increases exponentially with a longer wire-grid period. The results suggest that strong localization of near-fields observed with bWGPs can be used to improve polarimetric performance of a WGP.