Tailorable Elastomeric Grating With Tunable Groove Density Gradient

This paper describes a new method for fabrication of tailorable elastomeric gratings with tunable groove density gradients based on stretching of the grating sample in a direction perpendicular to the grating line within the grating surface. The advantage of this method is that the tunable groove density gradient can be achieved by tailoring of the shape of a grating sample with uniform thickness. The groove density gradient changes as a specific function of its spatial position on the tailored surface of the elastomeric grating. The resulting tailorable elastomeric gratings can be used in the fabrication of devices such as optical position sensors and tunable optical filters.