Fabrication and encapsulation of a short-period wire grid polarizer with improved viewing angle by the angled-evaporation method

A wire grid polarizer (WGP) is fabricated by using a simplified approach with a combination of nanoimprint lithography (NIL) and angled metal deposition. The period of the imprinted polymer nanograting used in this study is 180 nm. The WGP is formed by two consecutive angled aluminium evaporation processes, essentially halving the period for the aluminium (Al) nanograting. The fabricated WGP shows good optical properties for polarized light. More importantly, because of the slight reduction of the period of the nanograting as compared with previous results, the viewing angle, which is one of the most important characters in display equipment, is extended greatly. Encapsulation of the WGP using poly(methyl methacrylate) is conducted for practical application of the WGP. The thickness of the coating is controlled to be less than 1 μm, to prevent the degradation of the optical properties of the WGP.