Fabrication of 3D photonic crystal by deep x-ray lithography

Abstract

Three dimensions photonic crystals represent one of the most important building blocks towards the achievement of a full optics communication technology. Although several methods have been demonstrated to prepare 3D photon crystals, 3D photonic crystals still represent a challenge to a fabrication point of view. It is highly desirable that the fabrication of these 3D structures involves simple technologies. In this paper, a novel method has been developed to fabricate 3D photonic crystals structure. The process of multi deep X-ray lithography is: Firstly, the cube or cuboid of resist sample is shaped by lathe. Then, the microstructures are patterned by three times deep X-ray lithograph through three surfaces that are vertically each other. After development, the 3D PC structure is obtained. The 3D photonic crystals structures are fabricated to demonstrate this method. The result shows that this method can avoid many problems caused by tilt X-ray lithography and the lattice layer is enough to meet the requirement of 3D photonic crystals. It is simple and effective to realize the 3D photonic crystals structure by using multi deep X-ray lithography. And various 3D photonic crystals types and lattice defects can be achieved by using this method.