All-optical photonic crystal logic gates for optical computing: an extensive review

Abstract

Internet-based communication has become a major field, with a user base that is expanding day-by-day. The needs have overloaded the available bandwidth, and higher speed has become a mandatory requirement to satisfy the user demands and increased use of the internet. Therefore, there is a need for high-performance computers due to increasing dependence on computing technology. Optics is emerging as the best possible solution over electronics because it is capable of providing parallel data processing with fewer expenses and greater speed of more than 10,000 times faster than electronic computers. The main building block of optical computing is the all-optical logic gates, which are designed using different techniques. Different types of photonic crystal-based all-optical logic gates have been reviewed in detail by discussing the key characteristics and demonstrating the advantages over the previously available technologies (semiconductor optical amplifier and nonlinear waveguide) that are used to build all-optical logic gates.