The term photonic crystals appears because of the analogy between electron waves in crystals and the light waves in artificial periodic dielectric structures. During the recent years the investigation of one-, two-and three-dimensional periodic structures has attracted a widespread attention of the world optics community because of great potentiality of such structures in advanced applied optical fields. The interest in periodic structures has been stimulated by the fast development of semiconductor technology that now allows the fabrication of artificial structures, whose period is comparable with the wavelength of light in the visible and infrared ranges.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6354/16969/00781867.pdf

Photonic crystals

The electromagnetic theory of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), despite its simplicity, can account for all major SERS observations, including: the need for a nanostructured material as the SERS-active system; the observation that some metals form good SERS-active systems while others do not; the observation that strongly interacting metal nanoparticles result in very much more effective SERS-active systems; the observed polarization sensitivity shown by nanoparticle aggregates; and the optical behavior of nanostructured metals in the absence of a molecular adsorbate. By extending the ideas inherent in the electromagnetic model one can also understand the seminal features reported for single-molecule SERS, including the puzzling observation that only a few silver ‘particles’ in an ensemble are ‘hot’ (they are appropriately structured nanoparticle clusters) and that for a hot particle, once one is able to observe SERS, adding more adsorbate does not significantly alter the intensity (once the electromagnetic hot spot is occupied, adding adsorbate to other sites on the nanoparticle cluster will not add greatly to the observed intensity). However, the electromagnetic model does not account for all that is learned through SERS. Molecular resonances, charge-transfer transitions and other processes such as ballistic electrons transiently probing the region where the molecule resides and then modulating electronic processes of the metal as a result certainly contribute to the rich information SERS reports; and by virtue of the fact that these contributions will vary from molecule to molecule, they will constitute the most interesting aspects reported by SERS. But, the overall reason why SERS produces such inordinate enhancements is largely an electromagnetic property of nanostructures. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy: a brief retrospective

Light-Emitting Diodes. (Monographs in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.) By A. A. Bergh and P. J. Dean. Pp. viii+591. (Clarendon: Oxford; Oxford University: London, 1976.) £22.

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Light-emitting diodes

An object is to provide a semiconductor device of which a manufacturing process is not complicated and by which cost can be suppressed, by forming a thin film transistor using an oxide semiconductor film typified by zinc oxide, and a manufacturing method thereof. For the semiconductor device, a gate electrode is formed over a substrate; a gate insulating film is formed covering the gate electrode; an oxide semiconductor film is formed over the gate insulating film; and a first conductive film and a second conductive film are formed over the oxide semiconductor film. The oxide semiconductor film has at least a crystallized region in a channel region.

Semiconductor device, and manufacturing method thereof

Control of spontaneously emitted light lies at the heart of quantum optics. It is essential for diverse applications ranging from miniature lasers and light-emitting diodes, to single-photon sources for quantum information, and to solar energy harvesting. To explore such new quantum optics applications, a suitably tailored dielectric environment is required in which the vacuum fluctuations that control spontaneous emission can be manipulated. Photonic crystals provide such an environment: they strongly modify the vacuum fluctuations, causing the decay of emitted light to be accelerated or slowed down, to reveal unusual statistics, or to be completely inhibited in the ideal case of a photonic bandgap. Here we study spontaneous emission from semiconductor quantum dots embedded in inverse opal photonic crystals. We show that the spectral distribution and time-dependent decay of light emitted from excitons confined in the quantum dots are controlled by the host photonic crystal. Modified emission is observed over large frequency bandwidths of 10%, orders of magnitude larger than reported for resonant optical microcavities. Both inhibited and enhanced decay rates are observed depending on the optical emission frequency, and they are controlled by the crystals’ lattice parameter. Our experimental results provide a basis for all-solid-state dynamic control
of optical quantum systems.

Controlling the dynamics of spontaneous emission from quantum dots by photonic crystals

Photonic crystals are attracting current interest for a variety of reasons, such as their ability to inhibit the spontaneous emission of light1,2. This and related properties arise from the formation of photonic bandgaps, whereby multiple scattering of photons by lattices of periodically varying refractive indices acts to prevent the propagation of electromagnetic waves having certain wavelengths. One route to forming photonic crystals is to etch two-dimensional periodic lattices of vertical air holes into dielectric slab waveguides3,4,5,6,7. Such structures can show complete photonic bandgaps8,9,10, but only for large-diameter air holes in materials of high refractive index (such as gallium arsenide, n = 3.69), which unfortunately leads to significantly reduced optical transmission when combined with optical fibres of low refractive index. It has been suggested that quasicrystalline (rather than periodic) lattices can also possess photonic bandgaps11,12,13,14. Here we demonstrate this concept experimentally and show that it enables complete photonic bandgaps—non-directional and for any polarization—to be realized with small air holes in silicon nitride (n = 2.02), and even glass (n = 1.45). These properties make photonic quasicrystals promising for application in a range of optical devices14,15,16,17,18.

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Complete photonic bandgaps in 12-fold symmetric quasicrystals

Comprehensive reflectivity mapping of the angular dispersion of nanostructured arrays comprising of inverted pyramidal pits is demonstrated. By comparing equivalently structured dielectric and metallic arrays, diffraction and plasmonic features are readily distinguished. While the diffraction features match expected theory, localised plasmons are also observed with severely flattened energy dispersions. Using pit arrays with identical pitch, but graded pit dimensions, energy scaling of the localised plasmon is observed. These localised plasmons are found to match a simple model which confines surface plasmons onto the pit sidewalls thus allowing an intuitive picture of the plasmons to be developed. This model agrees well with a 2D finite-difference time-domain simulation which shows the same dependence on pit dimensions. We believe these tuneable plasmons are responsible for the surface-enhancement of the Raman scattering (SERS) of an attached layer of benzenethiol molecules. Such SERS substrates have a wide range of applications both in security, chemical identification, environmental monitoring and healthcare.

/pdf/tuning-localized-plasmons-in-nanostructured-substrates-for-1632qtzvwb.pdf

Tuning localized plasmons in nanostructured substrates for surface-enhanced Raman scattering

An optical device includes a waveguide bounded by a region containing a photonic band gap the properties of which determined the transfer characteristic of the waveguide. Such a device may serve as a component of, for example a wavelength division multiplexer, a monochromatic laser or a chemical sensor. It may serve as an optical bus for an electronic component such as a microprocessor. These devices are particularly suitable for incorporation in optical and optoelectronic integrated circuits as they permit the fabrication of waveguides having right-angle bends with a radius of the order of 2 νm.

Optical devices and methods of fabrication thereof

An efficient hybrid color-conversion light-emitting device consisting of colloidal nanocrystal quantum dots (NQDs) and a surface-patterned GaN-based LED is demonstrated (see figure). Excitation in a surface-patterned LED is efficiently transferred to NQD emitters via non-radiative energy transfer. A twofold enhancement of the NQD emission is achieved.

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Increased Color-Conversion Efficiency in Hybrid Light-Emitting Diodes utilizing Non-Radiative Energy Transfer

Mesostructured metallic substrates composed of square pyramidal pits are shown to confine localized plasmons. Plasmon frequency tuning is demonstrated using white light reflection spectroscopy with a wide range of structure dimensions from 400 to 3000 nm. Using a simple plasmon cavity model, we demonstrate how the individual pit morphology and not their periodicity controls the resonance frequencies. By measuring the surface-enhanced Raman scattering SERS signals from monolayers of benzenethiol on the same range of mesostructures, we extract a quantitative connection between absorption, field enhancement, and SERS signals. The match between theory and experiment enables effective design of plasmon devices tailored for particular applications, such as optimizing SERS substrates.

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Martin D. B. Charlton

Papers

Complete photonic bandgaps in 12-fold symmetric quasicrystals

Tuning localized plasmons in nanostructured substrates for surface-enhanced Raman scattering

Optical devices and methods of fabrication thereof

Increased Color-Conversion Efficiency in Hybrid Light-Emitting Diodes utilizing Non-Radiative Energy Transfer

Tuning localized plasmon cavities for optimized surface-enhanced Raman scattering