19 August 2017 Bioinspired irregularly chirped broadband reflecting multilayers
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
Dielectric multilayers consisting of alternating layers of two different materials with thicknesses irregularly decreasing with depth in the structure are included in the cuticle of some beetles whose shell exhibits broadband reflection in the optical wavelength range. Emulating these structures, we propose and numerically analyze irregularly chirped dielectric multilayers. Analysis was performed using a dedicated genetic algorithm (GA) that searches for the multilayer configurations maximizing the reflection for normal incidence over a large wavelength range. We found that the GA leads to the irregularly chirped reflectors that significantly outperform the regularly chirped ones proposed and analyzed in the literature.
© 2017 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) 0091-3286/2017/$25.00 © 2017 SPIE
Francesco Chiadini, Vincenzo Fiumara, and Antonio Scaglione "Bioinspired irregularly chirped broadband reflecting multilayers," Optical Engineering 56(8), 085102 (19 August 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.56.8.085102
Received: 1 June 2017; Accepted: 24 July 2017; Published: 19 August 2017
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CITATIONS
Cited by 3 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Reflectivity

Dielectrics

Reflectors

Refractive index

Genetic algorithms

Multilayers

Optical engineering

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