Appl. Phys.

B 87, 255258 (2007)

Applied Physics B

DOI: 10.1007/s00340-007-2578-x

Lasers and Optics

All-optical tunable narrow-band organic

photonic crystal filters

x. hu
p. jiang
c. ding
q. gongu

State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics, Department of Physics, Peking University,
Beijing 100871, P.R. China

Received: 17 October 2006

Published online: 22 February 2007 Springer-Verlag 2007
ABSTRACT An all-optical tunable narrow-band filter with an ul-

trafast response time of 10 ps is realized in a two-dimensional

nonlinear polystyrene photonic crystal. The pump and probe
scheme is adopted to measure tunability based on the picosecond optical Kerr effect. The passband of the photonic crystal
filter shifts about 4 nm under excitation of 14.7 GW/cm2 pump
intensity, which is in agreement with the theoretical prediction.
PACS 42.70.Qs;

61.46.+w; 81.15.-z

Introduction

Recently, tunable narrow-band photonic crystal filters have attracted great attention due to their important applications in the fields of optical interconnection network and
ultrahigh speed information processing. Many schemes have
been proposed to construct narrow-band photonic crystal filters, such as the cascaded identical resonant grating [13],
the coupled-cavity waveguide [46], the single photonic crystal slab [7] or the photonic crystal waveguide coupled with
microcavities [8, 9]. Villa et al. demonstrated that surface
modes in the junction of two different one-dimensional photonic crystals placed in series could also be used to form
narrow-band filters [10]. In 2003, Li et al. reported a 25 nm
shift for the passband of a photonic bandpass filter in a onedimensional silicon photonic crystal by modifying the lattice
parameters [11]. Recently, Chen et al. achieved a shift in the
center wavelength of the passband of about 23 nm in a onedimensional GaAs/AlO narrow-band photonic crystal filter
by changing the thickness of the defect layer [12]. However,
little attention was paid to the time response of the tunable
narrow-band photonic crystal filter up to now.
The aim of this letter is to achieve an ultrafast time response for tunable narrow-band photonic crystal filters. For
this purpose, we adopted polystyrene to fabricate a twodimensional photonic crystal filter due to its subpicosecond
nonlinear response [13]. According to the nonlinear optical
Kerr effect, the refractive index of polystyrene varies with the
pump intensity, which leads to the changes of the position of
the passband in the photonic bandgap. An ultrafast response
u Fax: +86-10-62756567, E-mail: qhgong@pku.edu.cn

time of 10 ps was achieved for the tunable photonic crystal

filter.
2

Experimental

Polystyrene powder with a normal molecular

weight of 8 000 000 (Fluka Chemie Company, Switzerland)
was dissolved in toluene with a weight ratio of 1 : 140. The
spin-coating method was used to fabricate polystyrene films
with a thickness of 300 nm on silicon dioxide substrates [14].
The refractive index of silicon dioxide is smaller than that of
polystyrene, which ensures excellent control of light in the
vertical direction. A focused ion-beam (FIB) etching system
(Model DB235, FEI) was employed to prepare the periodical patterns of a photonic crystal filter. The Ga+ ion beam
generated by a Canion ion gun was connected to an ultrahigh
vacuum chamber, where the sample was placed. A spot current of 30 pA was obtained from a weak emission current of
1 A at 25 keV. The fabrication process is detailed in [15].
The sample was composed of four line defects with a width
of 310 nm in the center of regular square arrays of cylindrical
air holes embedded in the background matrix of a polystyr-

FIGURE 1 Surface view: scanning electron micrograph of the twodimensional photonic crystal filter

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Applied Physics B Lasers and Optics

probe laser was equal to that of the guided electromagnetic

modes of the polystyrene waveguide. As a result, the probe
laser was coupled in the polystyrene waveguide with the help
of the evanescent field generated in the air gap between the
upper surface of the polystyrene waveguide and the bottom
of the prism. The probe laser propagated through the photonic crystal in the X direction, which was parallel to the
line defect. Both the probe and pump laser were TE polarized
waves with their electric-field vectors parallel to the polystyrene film. A delay line was used to adjust the temporal relation
between the pump and probe pulse. The light transmitting
through the photonic crystal was detected by a monochromator, whose output signals were magnified by a photomultiplier
before they were input into an oscilloscope. Finally, a computer was used to collect and handle the output data from the
oscilloscope.
3

Results and discussion

The transmittance spectra of the photonic crystal

filter are depicted in Fig. 3. Due to the limitation of the operation frequency range of the OPA, the transmittance spectrum
of the photonic crystal filter could not be measured when
the wavelength was lower than 430 nm. The central wavelength and the estimated bandwidth of the passband of the
photonic crystal filter were 496 nm and 112 nm, respectively.

FIGURE 2 Experimental setup. The thick lines represent optical connections, while thin lines are electronic connections

ene slab. A scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image of the

two-dimensional narrow-band photonic crystal filter is shown
in Fig. 1. The radii of the air holes and the lattice constant were
90 nm and 220 nm, respectively. The total etched area was
about 2.5 100 m. The highly ordered and periodic structures of air hole patterns indicated the perfect quality of the
photonic crystal filter.
The evanescent-field coupling technique [15] was used
to measure the transmittance spectrum of the photonic
crystal filter. The experimental setup is depicted in Fig. 2.
A 1.064 m beam (with a pulse duration and pulse repetition rate of 25 ps and 10 Hz, respectively) from a YAG
laser (Model PL2143B, Ekspla) was used as the pump light,
which was normally incident to the upper surface plane of
the photonic crystal filter. The beam (pulse duration 10 ps
and repetition rate 10 Hz) from an optical parameter amplifier
(OPA) (Model OPA-740, CAS) pumped by the YAG laser was
used as the probe light. The photonic crystal filter was connected with two polystyrene waveguides with a thickness of
300 nm. The probe laser was incident on the bottom of a prism
with a high refractive index, which was placed above the upper surface of the polystyrene waveguide. The incident angle
of the probe laser was adjusted so that the condition of total internal reflection was met and the propagation constant of the

FIGURE 3 Transmittance spectra of the photonic crystal filter. (a) The

blocks represent the measured values. (b) The line represents the simulation

FIGURE 4 Changes of the probe light transmittance as functions of the

time delay between pump and probe pulses. The wavelength of the probe
light and the pump intensity were 551 nm and 14.7 GW/cm2 , respectively

HU et al.

All-optical tunable narrow-band organic photonic crystal filters

257
FIGURE 5 Tunability of the photonic crystal filter. (a) Shifts of the
long-wavelength edge of the passband with different pump intensities.
(b) Calculated transmittance spectra
of the passband with different pump
intensities by the multiple scattering
method

The measured results were in agreement with the theoretical

ones calculated by the multiple scattering method [16]. When
a line defect is introduced in a perfect two-dimensional photonic crystal, the periodicity of the spatial distribution of the
dielectric materials is destroyed. This leads to the formation
of localized defect modes with high transmittance in the photonic bandgap [17]. Kee et al. pointed out that the coupling
between two identical localized modes makes their eigenfrequency split into a lower frequency mode and a higher frequency mode [18]. When a number of identical defect units
are introduced in a photonic crystal, a transmittance band can
be formed [19, 20]. This results in the formation of the wide
passband of the photonic crystal filter. The transmittance of
the passband changes slightly, which indicates that the passband possesses a flat top. The average transmittance of the
passband was more than 80% and the transmittance contrast
between the passband and the stop band was higher than 60%.
The high transmittance and the steep roll-off of the passband
imply that the photonic crystal filter possesses excellent filtering properties.
In order to determine the time response of the tunable photonic crystal filter, we measured the transmittance changes
of the probe light as functions of the time delay between the
pump and probe pulse. The measured results are shown in
Fig. 4. The wavelength of the probe light and the pump intensity were 551 nm and 14.7 GW/cm2 , respectively. It is very
clear that the transmittance changed only when the pump and
probe pulse overlapped with each other. The maximal transmittance was obtained for a zero time delay, with two pulses
overlapping completely in the temporal domain. Moreover,
the half width of the signal envelope, 10 ps, was in proximity to the pulse duration of the pump light. The signal profile
showed an almost symmetrical distribution around the zero
time delay. This evidence showed that the time response of the
tunable photonic crystal filter was faster than the experimental time resolution [21]. So, the measured time response of the
tunable photonic crystal filter, 10 ps, is limited by the pulse
duration of the pump light.
To study the tunability of the photonic crystal filter, the
transmittance changes of the 551 nm probe light as functions
of pump intensity were measured. The shift of the longwavelength edge of the passband with different pump intensities is depicted Fig. 5a. The shift magnitude of the passband

increases with the increment of the pump intensity. According to the nonlinear Kerr effect, the positive value of the
third-order nonlinear susceptibility of polystyrene results in
the increase of the effective refractive index of the photonic
crystal under the excitation of the pump light, which makes
the passband of the photonic crystal filter shift in the longwavelength direction. The maximal shift was 4.2 nm under
14.7 GW/cm2 pump intensity, which was in agreement with
the calculated results. The transmittance spectra of the passband with varying pump intensity calculated by the multiple
scattering method is shown in Fig. 5b. The average transmittance and the bandwidth of the passband changed slightly
under the excitation of the pump light, which shows that the
photonic crystal filter possesses very excellent tunability.
4

Conclusion

In conclusion, we have realized a tunable narrowband photonic crystal filter with an ultrafast response time of
10 ps. These results may be valuable references for the study
of integrated photonic devices with ultrafast time response.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was supported by the
National Natural Science Foundation of China under grants 10574007,
10521002, 10434020, 10328407, 60378012, and 90501007, and the National Basic Research Program of China under grants 2007CB307001 and
2006CB806007.

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