Patent ID: 8709219

Claim:
A process of manufacturing a structured diamond tool for use in manufacture of grayscale gratings, the method comprising: placing a diamond tool in a focused ion beam (FIB) machine of the type having a display that provides a view mode; employing the FIB machine to display an image of the diamond tool in the display during view mode so that a tip of the diamond tool is visible in the display; defining an image plane corresponding to the plane of the view mode image in the display; calibrating a magnification of the displayed image to match the scale of the displayed image to the physical size of the diamond tool; employing FIB machine drawing software to overlay a displayed image of a grating profile line across at least a portion of the displayed image of the tip of the diamond tool, the displayed image of the grating profile line being substantially one-dimensional when viewed with respect to the image plane and exhibiting changes in linearity that correspond to changes in grating profile depth corresponding to at least one of: (a) a predefined grayscale grating profile; or (b) a negative of a predefined grayscale grating profile; and machining the diamond tool with FIB by using an ion beam to strike a surface of the diamond tool, the ion beam being directed normal to said image plane and being manipulated to follow the displayed image of the grating profile line.