2000 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.

IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology
Volume 18 Number 10, October 2000

Table of Contents for this issue

Complete paper in PDF format

Design and Fabrication of Silicon Photonic Crystal Optical Waveguides

Marko Lončar, Theodor Doll, Jelena Vučković and Axel Scherer

Page 1402.

Abstract:

We have designed and fabricated waveguides that incorporate two-dimensional (2-D) photonic crystal geometry for lateral confinement of light, and total internal reflection for vertical confinement. Both square and triangular photonic crystal lattices were analyzed. A three-dimensional (3-D) finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) analysis was used to find design parameters of the photonic crystal and to calculate dispersion relations for the guided modes in the waveguide structure. We have developed a new fabrication technique to define these waveguides into silicon-on-insulator material. The waveguides are suspended in air in order to improve confinement in the vertical direction and symmetry properties of the structure. High-resolution fabrication allowed us to include different types of bends and optical cavities within the waveguides.

References

  1. J. D. Joannopoulos, R. D. Meade and J. N. Winn, Photonic Crystals, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1995.
  2. E. Yablonovitch, "Inhibited spontaneous emission in solid-state physics and electronics", Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 58, pp.  2059-2062, 1987.
  3. C. C. Cheng and A. Scherer, "Fabrication of photonic band-gap crystals", J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B, vol. 13, pp.  2696-2700, 1995.
  4. S. Noda, N. Yamamoto, M. Imada, H. Kobayashi and M. Okano, "Alignment and stacking of semiconductor photonic bandgaps by wafer-fusion", J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 17, pp.  1948-1955, 1999.
  5. S. Lin and J. G. Fleming, "A three-dimensional optical photonic crystal", J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 17, pp.  1944-1947, 1999.
  6. T. F. Krauss, R. M. De La Rue and S. Brand, "Two-dimensional photonic-bandgap structures operating at near infrared wavelengths", Nature, vol. 383, pp.  699-702, 1996.
  7. P. R. Villeneuve, S. Fan, S. G. Johnson and J. D. Joannopoulos, "Three-dimensional photon confinement in photonic crystals of low-dimensional periodicity", Proc. Inst. Elec. Eng.-Optoelectron., vol. 145, pp.  384-390, 1998.
  8. B. D'Urso, O. Painter, J. O'Brian, T. Tombrello, A. Yariv and A. Scherer, "Modal reflectivity in finite-depth two-dimensional photonic-crystal microcavities", J. Opt. Soc. Amer. B, vol. 15, pp.  1155-1159, 1998.
  9. S. G. Johnson, S. Fan, P. R. Villeneuve and J. D. Joannopoulos, "Guided modes in photonic crystal slabs", Phys. Rev. B, vol. 60, pp.  5751-5758, 1999.
  10. O. Painter, J. Vučković and A. Scherer, "Defect modes of a two-dimensional photonic crystal in an optically thin dielectric slab", J. Opt. Soc. Amer. B, vol. 16, pp.  275-285, 1999.
  11. O. Painter, R. K. Lee, A. Yariv, A. Scherer, J. D. O'Brian, P. D. Dapkus and I. Kim, "Two-dimensional photonic band-gap defect mode laser", Science, vol. 284, pp.  1819-1821, 1999.
  12. D. J. Rippin, K. Lim, G. S. Petrich, P. R. Villeneuve, S. Fan, E. R. Thoen, J. D. Joannopoulos, E. P. Ippen and L. A. Kolodziejski, "One-dimensional photonic bandgap microcavities for strong optical confinement in GaAs and GaAs/Al xOy semiconductor waveguides", J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 17, pp.  2152-2160, 1999.
  13. R. D. Meade, A. Devenyi, J. D. Joannopoulos, O. L. Alerhand, D. A. Smith and K. Kash, "Novel applications of photonic band gap materials: Low-loss bends and high Q cavities", J. Appl. Phys., vol. 75, pp.  4753-4755, 1994.
  14. A. Mekis, J. C. Chen, I. Kurland, S. Fan, P. R. Villeneuve and J. D. Joannopoulos, "High transmission through sharp bends in photonic crystal waveguides", Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 77, pp.  3787-3790,  1996.
  15. S. Lin, E. Chow, V. Hietala, P. R. Villeneuve and J. D. Joannopoulos, "Experimental demonstration of guiding and bending of electromagnetic waves in a photonic crystal", Science, vol. 282, pp.  274-276, 1998.
  16. I. El-Kady, M. M. Sigalas, R. Biswas and K. M. Ho, "Dielectric waveguide in two-dimensional photonic bandgap materials", J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 17, pp.  2042-2049, 1999.
  17. S. Kuchinsky, D. C. Allan, N. F. Borelli and J. C. Cotteverte, "3D localization in a channel waveguide in a photonic crystal with 2D periodicity", Opt. Commun., vol. 175, pp.  147-152, 2000.
  18. T. Baba, N. Fukaya and J. Yonekura, "Observation of light propagation in photonic crystal optical waveguides with bends", Electron. Lett., vol. 35, pp.  654-655,  1999.
  19. M. Tokushima, H. Kosaka, A. Tomita and H. Yamada, "Lightwave propagation through a 120° sharply bent single-line-defect phoonic crystal waveguide", Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 76, pp.  952-954, 2000.
  20. M. Lončar, D. Nedeljković, J. C. Cotteverte, T. Doll, A. Scherer, J. Gerretsen and T. P. Pearsall, "Waveguiding at 1500 nm using photonic crystal structures in silicon on insulator wafers", in Proc. CLEO/QELS, 2000, p.  89. 
  21. K. S. Yee, "Numerical solution to initial boundary value problems involving Maxwell's equations in isotropic media", IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-14, pp.  302-307, 1966.
  22. A. Taflove, Computational Electrodynamics-The Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method , Boston, MA: Artech House, 1995.
  23. M. Boroditsky, R. Coccioli and E. Yablonovitch, "Analysis of photonic crystals for light emitting diodes using the finite difference time domain technique", Photonics West, 1998.
  24. G. Mur, "Absorbing boundary conditions for the finite-difference approximation of the time-domain electromagnetic equations", IEEE Trans. Electromagn. Compat., vol. EMC-23, pp.  377-382, 1981.
  25. S. Fan, P. R. Villeneuve and J. D. Joannopoulos, "Large omnidirectional band gaps in metallodielectric photonic crystals", Phys. Rev. B, vol. 54, pp.  11 245-11 251, 1996.
  26. A. Chutinan and S. Noda, "Analysis of waveguides and waveguide bends in photonic crystal slabs with triangular lattice", Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. , vol. 39, pp.  L595-L596, 2000.
  27. M. Lončar, J. Vučković and A. Scherer, "Modal analysis of waveguides based on a triangular photonic crystal lattice", in LEOS 2000 Annual Meeting, Nov. 2000, to be published.
  28. C. Manolatou, S. G. Johnson, S. Fan, P. R. Villeneuve, H. A. Haus and J. D. Joannopoulos, "High-density integrated optics", J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 17, pp.  1682-1692, 1999.
  29. J. Vučković, M. Lončar, H. Mabuchi and A. Scherer, "Photonic crystal cavities for strong coupling between an atom and the cavity field", in LEOS Annual Meeting, Nov. 2000, to be published.
  30. A. Scherer, B. P. Van Der Gaag, K. Kash, H. G. Craighead and P. Grabbe, "Anisotropic ion beam assisted etching of optical structures in GaAs and InP", Mat. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc., vol. 126, pp.  245-250, 1988.