Effects of fabrication errors on diffraction efficiency for a diffractive membrane

The demand for space-borne telescopes with an aperture of 20 m is forcing the development of large diameter diffractive Fresnel zone lenses(FZLs) on membranes. However, due to the fabrication errors of multi-level microstructures, the real diffraction efficiency is always significantly smaller than the theoretical value. In this Letter,the effects of a set of fabrication errors on the diffraction efficiency for a diffractive membrane are studied. In order to verify the proposed models, a 4-level membrane FZL with a diameter of 320 mm is fabricated. The fabrication errors of the membrane FZL are measured, and its diffraction efficiency in the +1 order is also tested.The results show that the tested diffraction efficiency is very close to the calculated value based on the proposed models. It is expected that the present work could play a theoretical guiding role in the future development of space-borne diffractive telescopes.