Numerical study of Dammann array illuminators

The numerical solutions of binary-phase (0, π) gratings for one-dimensional array illuminators up to 32 are presented. Some fabrication errors, which are due to position-quantization errors, phase errors, dilation (or erosion) errors, and the side-slope error, are calculated and show that even-number array illuminators are superior to odd-number array illuminators when these fabrication errors are considered. One (0, π) binary-phase, 8 × 16 array illuminator made with the wet-chemical-etching method is given in this paper.