Fabrication of tunable photonic crystals
I-2: Fabrication of tunable photonic crystals |
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F. Chollet |
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Abstract |
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Since the proposal of photonic crystal (PC) by Yablonovitch and John in 1987 the topic has seen widespread interest among researchers – but most observers, including big companies, had the feeling that it would remain for a long time a ‘future’ application. The things changed when Ion Optics (http://www.ion-optics.com/sensorchip.asp) in 2001 started to sell a gas sensor based on PC. It revealed that PC could already bring decisive technical advantage and be commercially viable.
But this success with fixed photonic crystal is only a start and the development of tunable photonic crystals would reach a much broader range of products (beam stirring, WDM communication, battle ground gas sensor, tunable IR source, ultra-small spectroscope…). However tunable PC so far have only been obtained with an overly complex fabrication or/and had a small tunability range. We propose a new fabrication principle based on a ‘soft’ polymer matrix with embedded high index of refraction nano-pillars. Contrary to usual fabrication technique where stiff silicon matrix are used with air holes, our soft matrix allows mechanical tuning of the PC in a wide range with simple integrated electrostatic or thermal micro-actuators. |
