Towards an all Polymeric Solar Collector: An exploratory study

Solar thermal energy solutions are facing a slow market penetration because of long economic pay back times of the initial investment. Concerning solar water heating, installation and hardware costs must be significantly reduced to allow for successful market penetration. As an attractive approach to cost reduction, I propose to replace the...

Focal field shaping by means of pupil engineering using the ENZ theory

With a semi-analytical result from the Extended Nijboer-Zernike theory (which relates the Zernike modes that form a pupil function directly to basic functions in the focal region), an algorithm is developed which finds pupil functions which give rise to an extended depth of focus. An outcome of this algorithm is used to create a phase mask,...

Performance Improvement of Optical Algorithms on Multicore Platforms

ASML is one of the world's largest suppliers of lithography systems for the semiconductor industry. ASML designs and develops machines that are used to print circuits on silicon wafers, to produce IC chips. These circuits have to be printed with accuracy of up to 2nm. For this purpose, the machines incorporate several measurement systems. The...

A Dual-Beam Design Concept for the LOUPE Spectropolarimeter

In this thesis, a dual-beam design concept for the LOUPE (Lunar Observatory for Unresolved Polarimetry of Earth) spectropolarimeter is presented based on the work by Karalidi [2012] and Hoeijmakers [2013]. The mission statement of LOUPE is: LOUPE shall do spectropolarimetry of the Earth from the Moon in order to obtain reference data for...

Application of Deep Learning to Coherent Fourier Scatterometry data

This thesis discusses the application of deep learning to Coherent Fourier<br/>Scatterometry data in order to quickly and reliably detect nanoparticles on<br/>surfaces. An introduction to deep learning is followed by a review of the<br/>experimental setup and used software. After that, results are presented of<br/>classification accuracy tests...

Extreme-ultraviolet High-Harmonic Generation from Structured Silica

This thesis demonstrates the feasibility of Extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) high-harmonic generation from structured silica, and was performed at the Advanced Research Centre for Nanolithography (ARCNL). The project focuses on High-harmonic generation (HHG) from condensed matter, and further explores the possibility of high-harmonic generation from...

Two-Photon Quantum Interference using a Single Nitrogen-Vacancy Center

Generation of high fidelity entanglement between quantum nodes is a key component of a future quantum internet. Heralded entanglement generation of two spatially separated qubit nodes can be established by interference and measurement of two photons, each entangled with one qubit state. The two-node entanglement fidelity is limited by the degree...

Design and Control of a Portable AO System: A Continuous Model Based Approach

In the field of Adaptive Optics (AO) a new development has been introduced recently: the Wavefront Sensorless Adaptive Optics (WFSless AO) approach, which only uses camera measurements to optimize image quality and does not use a Shack-Hartman (SH) Wavefront Sensor (WFS) [Booth, 2006, Débarre et al., 2009, Hinnen et al., 2008]. In order to...

PINN inspired Freeform Design: Using Fraunhofer Diffraction to find Freeforms described by B-spline Surfaces

This project aims to recreate intensity patterns using Fraunhofer diffraction as a means of simulation. These intensity patterns are created by phase shifting specific parts of an incoming field of light. These phase shifts are determined by a B-spline surface, which is in turn controlled by so-called control points. Only a handful of control...

Optimization of modulated surface texturing for flexible thin-film silicon solar cells

The use of clean energy sources for meeting the world’s energy requirements is increasing at an exponential rate, thus opening up new areas for research and development. The second generation of photovoltaics, especially flexible thin-film solar cells, are increasingly being used over the first generation crystalline silicon technologies due to...

Design method for 3D printed compliant mechanisms

There are strict tolerances on the placement of optical components in high performance optical systems. Compliant alignment mechanisms can be used to meet these tolerances. Conventional manufacturing techniques, such as milling and spark erosion, have been used to produce an extensive library of alignment solutions but are limited in the...