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

Nano-optics of surface plasmon polaritons

We examine the current performance and future demands of interconnects to and on silicon chips. We compare electrical and optical interconnects and project the requirements for optoelectronic and optical devices if optics is to solve the major problems of interconnects for future high-performance silicon chips. Optics has potential benefits in interconnect density, energy, and timing. The necessity of low interconnect energy imposes low limits especially on the energy of the optical output devices, with a ~ 10 fJ/bit device energy target emerging. Some optical modulators and radical laser approaches may meet this requirement. Low (e.g., a few femtofarads or less) photodetector capacitance is important. Very compact wavelength splitters are essential for connecting the information to fibers. Dense waveguides are necessary on-chip or on boards for guided wave optical approaches, especially if very high clock rates or dense wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) is to be avoided. Free-space optics potentially can handle the necessary bandwidths even without fast clocks or WDM. With such technology, however, optics may enable the continued scaling of interconnect capacity required by future chips.

Device Requirements for Optical Interconnects to Silicon Chips

The silicon chip has been the mainstay of the electronics industry for the last 40 years and has revolutionized the way the world operates. Today, a silicon chip the size of a fingernail contains nearly 1 billion transistors and has the computing power that only a decade ago would take up an entire room of servers. As the relentless pursuit of Moore's law continues, and Internet-based communication continues to grow, the bandwidth demands needed to feed these devices will continue to increase and push the limits of copper-based signaling technologies. These signaling limitations will necessitate optical-based solutions. However, any optical solution must be based on low-cost technologies if it is to be applied to the mass market. Silicon photonics, mainly based on SOI technology, has recently attracted a great deal of attention. Recent advances and breakthroughs in silicon photonic device performance have shown that silicon can be considered a material onto which one can build optical devices. While significant efforts are needed to improve device performance and commercialize these technologies, progress is moving at a rapid rate. More research in the area of integration, both photonic and electronic, is needed. The future is looking bright. Silicon photonics could provide low-cost opto-electronic solutions for applications ranging from telecommunications down to chip-to-chip interconnects, as well as emerging areas such as optical sensing technology and biomedical applications. The ability to utilize existing CMOS infrastructure and manufacture these silicon photonic devices in the same facilities that today produce electronics could enable low-cost optical devices, and in the future, revolutionize optical communications

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6668/34347/01638290.pdf

Silicon photonics

The design, fabrication, and testing of several metamaterials that exhibit double negative (DNG) medium properties at X band frequencies are reported. DNG media are materials in which the permittivity and permeability are both negative. Simulation and experimental results are given that demonstrate the realization of DNG metamaterials matched to free-space. The extraction of the effective permittivity and permeability for these metamaterials from reflection and transmission data at normal incidence is treated. It is shown that the metamaterials studied exhibit DNG properties in the frequency range of interest.

Design, fabrication, and testing of double negative metamaterials

We found that self-determining collimated light is generated in a photonic crystal fabricated on silicon. The divergence of the collimated beam is insensitive to that of the incident beam and much smaller than the divergence that would be generated in conventional Gaussian optics. The incident-angle dependence of the self-collimated light propagation including lens-like divergent propagation was interpreted in terms of the highly modulated dispersion surfaces with inflection points, where the curvature changes from downward to upward corresponding to respectively a concave/convex-lens case. This demonstration is an important step towards controlling beam profile in photonic crystal integrated light circuits and towards developing “photonic crystalline optics.”

Self-collimating phenomena in photonic crystals

Light-beam steering that is extremely wavelength dependent has been demonstrated by using photonic crystals fabricated on Si. The scanning span reached 50° with only a 1% shift of incident wavelength at around 1 μm. The resulting angular dispersion is two orders of magnitude larger than that achieved with conventional prisms or gratings. The application of such superprism phenomena promises to enable the fabrication of integrated micro lightwave circuits that will allow more efficient use of wavelength resources when used in wavelength multiplexers/demultiplexers or dispersion compensators by enabling lower loss and broader bandwidth.

Photonic crystals for micro lightwave circuits using wavelength-dependent angular beam steering

The superprism phenomenon, the dispersion of light 500 times stronger than the dispersion in conventional prisms, was demonstrated at optical wavelengths in photonic crystals (PC's) fabricated on Si. Drastic light-beam steering in the PC's was achieved by slightly changing the incident wavelength or angle. The scanning span reached 50/spl deg/ with only a 1% shift of incident wavelength, and reached 140/spl deg/ with only a 14/spl deg/ shift of the incident angle at wavelengths around 1 /spl mu/m. The propagation direction was quantitatively interpreted in terms of highly anisotropic dispersion surfaces derived by photonic band calculation. The physics behind this demonstration will open a novel field called photonic crystalline optics. The application of these phenomena promises to enable the fabrication of integrated microscale lightwave circuits (/spl mu/LC's) on Si with large scale integrated (LSI)-compatible lithography techniques. Such /spl mu/LC's will allow more efficient use of wavelength resources when used in wavelength multiplexers/demultiplexers or dispersion compensators by enabling lower loss and broader bandwidth.

Superprism phenomena in photonic crystals: toward microscale lightwave circuits

We have demonstrated a spot-size converter (SSC) that is made of photonic crystals (PCs) and has a conversion ratio of 10:1 for a 1-μm-wavelength light beam. Its real-spatial distribution was narrowed by intentionally broadening its wave vector distribution and increasing effective refractive index. The advantage of this PC-based SSC over conventional bulk-based SSC are compactness (monolithic integration), positional independence, and extremely deep depth of focus. This PC-SSC is a candidate for an interface between photonic-crystal waveguides and conventional optical waveguides.

Photonic-crystal spot-size converter

We propose a three-dimensional photonic crystal structure having a wide full photonic band gap in the optical regime, which can be fabricated by an alternating-layer deposition and etching (drilling) process. This fabrication process is much simpler than that previously reported. The combination of current lithographic technology and autocloning bias-sputtering deposition is a promising way of realizing these photonic crystals.

T. Kawashima

Papers

Self-collimating phenomena in photonic crystals

Photonic crystals for micro lightwave circuits using wavelength-dependent angular beam steering

Superprism phenomena in photonic crystals: toward microscale lightwave circuits

Photonic-crystal spot-size converter

Drilled alternating-layer three-dimensional photonic crystals having a full photonic band gap