Can You Print Polarizing Filters on Glass or Plastic Substrates?

[RogerInHawaii]

Is there any printing technology that can print small enough parallel lines on, say a glass or clear plastic substrate, that would make it a polarizing filter?

 

[Andy Resnick]

Sure- you can do it with a desktop printer. Except the useable wavelength will be in the far infrared or longer.

For visible light, you could probably do it with ion-beam milling- people are doing cool things with that technology:

http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12109/

 

[RogerInHawaii]

Excellent! Now, a follow-up question: Does the light actually have to pass through a filter in order for it to get polarized? If you just printed suitably thin, suitably spaced lines on a surface and reflected light off of it, would the light get polarized?

 

[Andy Resnick]

Reflection of light is another way to alter the polarization properties. You don't need anything special; taking advantage of Brewster's angle will do.

 

[arydberg]

For what is worth Polaroid invented the process to make polarizing filters. Everyone knew that certain crystals polarized light and these could be glued to plastic but no one knew how to align all the crystals in one direction. What Polaroid did was to spread the crystals on the plastic and then stretch the plastic. This aligned all the crystals.