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I. I NTRODUCTION
Fig. 1.
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Schematic 1-D PhC microcavity structures. (a) Multilayer stacks. (b) PhC slabs. (c) Planar ridge waveguide on SOI wafers.
end of the microcavity consist of pairs of layers of high refractive index contrast, with period A , while the cavity layer itself
comprises a second PhC of period B , where A = B . In the
work described here, the layer pairs were taken to be silicon
(dielectric constant Si = 12) and air (air = 1) [15] for later
comparison with SiAir equivalent PhC structures etched into
SOI ridge waveguides.
Fig. 1(b) and (c) shows such equivalent structures formed in
a planar slab waveguide and a ridge waveguide. Since a ridge
waveguide forms a convenient means of coupling light in and
out of the microcavity and a basis for further device integration, the structure shown in Fig. 1(c) is of particular interest.
However, the field confinement in the x-direction associated
with the ridge waveguide width introduces a complication to
the analysis. While the field confinement in the x-direction is
likely to affect the coupling of waveguide modes with the Bloch
modes of the PhC device, within the latter, it has an insignificant effect compared with the confinement in the out-of-plane
y-direction associated with the slab thickness. Therefore, in the
theory that follows, the PhC structure is treated like that in
Fig. 1(b), in which the etched features are assumed to extend
laterally over the full range |x| .
Another difference between the structures shown in Fig. 1(b)
and (c) is that the air gaps in the latter do not extend through
the entire thickness of the Si layer. Incomplete etching of the Si
layer helps in controlling the radiation loss that occurs for larger
air fractions in air/Si PhCs [8]. On the other hand, the remaining
Si at the bottom of the air gaps should be thin enough to ensure
little effect on the design of a practical multiwavelength cavity.
The resonant wavelengths are the key factor in designing a
multiwavelength cavity with a PhC central layer of the type
shown in Fig. 1. For all three structures, the resonant condition
is given by
2s = 2(L + Lp )ks +
= 4(L + Lp )ns /s + ,
s = 1, 2, 3 . . . .
(1)
In (1), ks , s , and ns are, respectively, the propagation constant, the free space wavelength, and the effective modal index
of the sth resonant mode, L is the effective cavity length, and
Lp is the penetration depth of the resonant mode into the two
reflectors. With a PhC replacing the usual homogeneous region
in the central section of the cavity, a resonant mode comprises
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Fig. 3. Schematic illustration of a plane wave and its component wave vectors
propagating via total internal reflection through a slab waveguide of permittivity
av , which is equivalent to the 1-D PhC.
+ f02 (kz ).
f (kz ) =
2 av
2 av
(2)2 av
(2)
In (2), c is the speed of light in free space, k is the wave
vector of the corresponding plane wave (see Fig. 3), kz is the
in-plane wave-vector amplitude (propagation constant), f (kz )
is the frequency, and h(kz ) is the vertical component of the
wave vector of a mode propagating inside the PhC with an inplane wave-vector amplitude (propagation constant) kz . The
term f0 (kz ) is the frequency of the in-plane cavity mode.
Equation (2) also describes the textbook dispersion relationship for a homogeneous slab waveguide of dielectric constant
equal to av .
It is proposed here that (2) can be adapted in a phenomenological way to account for the vertical confinement of the
Fig. 4. Calculated wave-vector curves of PhC silicon slabs using the approximate method of (2) (solid lines) and the rigorous method in [8] (dashed lines).
Only TE modes are calculated. The overlap layers are air. The substrate layers in
(a) and (b) are air and silica, respectively. The thickness of the slab is 0.4 times
the period; the air fraction is 0.3, with Si = 12, air = 1, and silica = 2.1.
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TABLE I
QUALITY FACTORS AND RELATIVE TRANSMITTIVITY AT RESONANCE OF SIMPLE 1-D PhC MICROCAVITIES
ETCHED INTO 2.4-m-WIDE SOI RIDGE WAVEGUIDES
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Fig. 5. Scanning electron micrograph of a fabricated multichanneltransmission planar ridge waveguide filter based on an SOI wafer.
A scanning electron microphotograph of the fabricated structure is shown in Fig. 5. From left to right, the structure consists
of a two-period PhC reflector of measured period A = 493 nm
(design value of A = 500 nm) and a microcavity comprising
a two-period PhC of measured period B = 985 nm (design
value of B = 1000 nm). This is followed by a second reflector formed by a two and half-period PhC of period A .
The measured air fractions of periods A and B are 0.67 and
0.74, respectively, against design values of 0.72 and 0.73. The
discrepancy between the design and measured feature sizes
arises primarily from the limit on the exposure resolution of
the electron beam lithography process.
Light from a supercontinuum source consisting of a piece
of endless single-mode PhC fiber [18] was coupled into the
ridge waveguide through a microlensed taper. The transmitted light then was measured using an optical power meter.
Fig. 6(a) shows the transmission spectrum measured by an optical spectral analyzer (OSA). Three transmission peaks occur
at wavelengths of 1168, 1321, and 1562 nm. The positions of
the latter two peaks agree with the 1310- and 1550-nm design
specification of the microcavity to better than 1%.
Fig. 6(b) shows the calculated wave-vector curves of a
1-D PhC slab with a period of B = 985 nm. The air fraction
is 0.74. Values of the resonant wave vectors kB found from
(1), with Lp = 0, and the measured transmission frequencies
f = A / taken from Fig. 6(a) are indicated on the wavevector curves. The three measured transmission wavelengths
correspond to the fourth, fifth, and sixth resonant modes of the
cavity. Good agreement between the measured and calculated
results based on (2) is achieved with errors less than 3.5%.
The low spectral power density of the supercontinuum source
and correspondingly large resolution bandwidth of the OSA
needed for adequate detector sensitivity prevented accurate
measurements of the Q of both the resonance peaks at 1321 and
1562 nm. However, the C-band TLS enabled accurate measurements of the longer wavelength resonance. Fig. 7 compares the
relative transmittivity of the resonance at 1562-nm wavelength,
which is measured using the TLS with a wavelength step
resolution of 0.01 nm, with the data from Fig. 6(a) for the
corresponding spectral range. The Q and Trel measured by
the TLS are 230 and 0.11, respectively, indicating reasonable
control of the loss, despite the width of the air gaps in the inner
1-D PhC and their nonoptimum depth for minimizing scattering
[14]. Since the full width at half maximum of the resonance
peaks at 1321 and 1562 nm measured by the supercontinuum
source/OSA combination is comparable, at 10 nm, it can
be inferred that the Q and Trel of the resonance at 1321-nm
wavelength are broadly similar to those of the 1562-nm peak.
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TABLE II
COMPARISON OF THE NORMALIZED RESONANT WAVELENGTHS
R EFERENCES
[1] E. Yablonovitch, Inhibited spontaneous emission in solid-state physics
and electronics, Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 58, no. 20, pp. 20592062,
May 1987.
[2] J. D. Joannopoulos, R. Meade, and J. Winn, Photonic Crystals.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1995.
[3] P. Russell, Photonic crystal fibers, Science, vol. 299, no. 5605, pp. 358
362, Jan. 2003.
[4] P. S. J. Russell, Designing photonic crystals, in Electron and Photon
Connement in Semiconductor Nanostructures, I. L. Nuovo Cimento, Ed.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: IOS, 2003, pp. 79103.
[5] J. S. Foresi, P. R. Villeneuve, J. Ferrera, E. R. Thoen, G. Steinmeyer,
S. Fan, J. D. Joannopoulos, L. C. Kimerling, H. I. Smith, and E. P.
Ippen, Photonic-bandgap microcavities in optical waveguides, Nature,
vol. 390, no. 6656, pp. 143145, Nov. 1997.
Xiaohua Shi received the B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering from Xian
Jiaotong University, Xian, China, in 2003. Since 2003, he has been working
toward the Ph.D. degree with the Department of Electronic and Electrical
Engineering, University of Bath, Bath, U.K.
His research involves the design, nanofabrication, and characterization of
photonic crystal structure devices in silicon-on-insulator structures. He is currently with the University of Glasgow, Glasgow, U.K., researching microsystem
fabrication.
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Wei Ding received the B.Sc. degree in physics and the M.E. degree in electronics from Peking University, Beijing, China, in 1999 and 2002, respectively.
Since 2003, he has been working toward the Ph.D. degree with the Centre for
Photonic and Photonic Materials, Department of Physics, University of Bath,
Bath, U.K.
His current researches involve microfabrications on tapered optical fibers and
applications of plasmonics in scanning near-field optical microscopes.
Duncan W. E. Allsopp (M89) received the B.Sc. degree in physics and the
M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Sheffield, Sheffield, U.K.,
in 1971, 1974, and 1977, respectively.
From 1977 to 1979, he was with Ferranti Electronics, Ltd., developing highspeed Si bipolar transistors. From 1979 to 1984, he was with the University of
Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, Manchester, U.K., researching
defects in semiconductors, and from 1984 to 1986, he was with British
Telecom Research Laboratories, Martlesham Heath, U.K. In 1986, he joined
the University of York, York, U.K., where he established a group researching
photonic devices. Since 1999, he has been in the Optoelectronics Group,
University of Bath, Bath, U.K., where he is currently a Royal Academy of
Engineering/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow, where he continues his
research into photonics.