A Polarization Beam Splitter for Optical Telecommunications Based on Two-Dimensional Metallic Photonic Crystal Structures

Abstract

We proposed a novel method of constructing a chip polarization beam splitter (PBS) based on two-dimensional metallic photonic crystal (2D-MPC) structures that can be realized using the industrial-based semiconductor IC Cu-interconnect technology. The performance of such a PBS at wavelengths for optical telecommunications is evaluated by the finite-difference-time-domain (FDTD) simulation method. This 2D-MPC PBS device uses three rows of one-dimensional (1D) arrays (3×N-MPC-2D-MPC) as a basic building block to construct the PBS. Using this architecture, the incoming transverse magnetic (TM) and transverse electric (TE) waves can be splitted with very high splitting efficiency (polarization ratio over 1000 for both the TM and TE modes). The implication of our scheme is that the fabrication of such a 2D-MPC PBS is totally compatible with current commercial complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication technology. This makes it a ready-to-use technology for the fabrication of a chip-base 2D-MPC PBS.