 An example of a zone plate Zone plates are a device used to focus light. Unlike lenses however, zone plates use diffraction instead of refraction. Created by Augustin-Jean Fresnel, they are sometimes called Fresnel zone plates in his honor.
A zone plate consists of a set of radially symmetric rings, known as Fresnel zones, which alternate between opaque and transparent. Light hitting the zone plate will diffract around the opaque zones. The zones can be spaced so that the diffracted light constructively interferes at the desired focus, creating an image there. Zone plates produce equivalent diffraction patterns no matter whether the central disk is opaque or transparent.
Design and manufacture
To get constructive interference at the focus, the zones should switch from opaque to transparent at radii where where n is an integer, λ is the wavelength of the light the zone plate is meant to focus and f is the distance from the center of the zone plate to the focus.
For plates with many zones, you can calculate the distance to the focus if you only know the radius of the outermost zone and its width,
In order to get complete constructive interference at the focus, the amplitude of the diffracted light waves from each zone in the zone plate must be the same. This means that for an evenly illuminated zone plate, the area of each zone is equal.
With more zones, in order for the area to stay constant, the width of each zone must decrease. The maximum possible resolution of a zone plate is given by the Rayleigh criterion as a function of the smallest zone width, 1.22 Δ rN. Therefore, the resolution is limited by how small you can make your zones reliably.
Zone plates can be manufactured using lithography. As lithography technology improves and the size of features that can be manufactured decreases, the possible resolution of zone plates manufactured this way can improve.
Unlike a standard lens, a zone plate produces subsidiary intensity maxima along the axis of the plate at odd fractions of the focal length (f/3, f/5, f/7, etc.), though these are less intense than the principal focus.
Applications
Physics There are many wavelengths of light outside of the visible area of the spectrum where traditional lens materials like glass are not transparent, and so lenses are more difficult to manufacture for light such as X-rays. Zone plates solve this problem by eliminating the need for finding transparent, refractive, easy-to-manufacture materials for every region of the spectrum.
Photography Zone plates are also used in photography in place of a lens or pinhole for a glowing, soft-focus image. One advantage over pinholes (aside from the unique, fuzzy look achieved with zone plates) is that the transparent area is larger than that of a comparable pinhole. The result is that the effective f-number of a zone plate is lower than for the corresponding pinhole and the exposure time can be decreased.
See also
External links - Zone plate: A quasi-scientific explanation (http://members.rogers.com/penate/zoneplate.html)
- Soft X-ray microscopy (http://www-cxro.lbl.gov/microscopy/)
- How to make a photographic zone plate (http://www.stanford.edu/~cpatton/zp.html)
- Examples of zone plate photographs (http://www.zoneplate.de)
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