Recent Advances in Resonant Waveguide Gratings

TLDR

Resonant waveguide gratings are dielectric structures that exploit leaky guided modes from UV to microwave frequencies, enabling diverse optical effects such as coupling, filtering, focusing, field enhancement, nonlinear phenomena, magneto‑optical Kerr effect, and electromagnetically induced transparency, and are widely applied in biosensing, photovoltaics, photodetectors, signal processing, polarizers, spectrometers, tunable filters, laser mirrors, and security features. This review surveys recent advances in RWG numerical modeling, manufacturing, physics, and applications, providing practitioners with standard tools and references.

Abstract

Abstract Resonant waveguide gratings (RWGs), also known as guided mode resonant (GMR) gratings or waveguide‐mode resonant gratings, are dielectric structures where these resonant diffractive elements benefit from lateral leaky guided modes from UV to microwave frequencies in many different configurations. A broad range of optical effects are obtained using RWGs such as waveguide coupling, filtering, focusing, field enhancement and nonlinear effects, magneto‐optical Kerr effect, or electromagnetically induced transparency. Thanks to their high degree of optical tunability (wavelength, phase, polarization, intensity) and the variety of fabrication processes and materials available, RWGs have been implemented in a broad scope of applications in research and industry: refractive index and fluorescence biosensors, solar cells and photodetectors, signal processing, polarizers and wave plates, spectrometers, active tunable filters, mirrors for lasers and optical security features. The aim of this review is to discuss the latest developments in the field including numerical modeling, manufacturing, the physics, and applications of RWGs. Scientists and engineers interested in using RWGs for their application will also find links to the standard tools and references in modeling and fabrication according to their needs.