Waveplates are essential for many optical and photonic devices (microscopes, lasers, imaging systems etc.). They are used to alter the polarization state of the incident light beam. With Sphotonix ultrafast laser writing technology we can fabricate waveplates in fused silica with a wide range of retardance levels while keeping the optical losses below 10%. An illustration of a λ/2 waveplate with its optical losses can be seen in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3.

Sphotonix offers λ/2, λ/4 and custom retardance waveplates for wavelengths ranging from 300 nm to 1500 nm.