Fabrication of Two- and Three-Dimensional Photonic Crystals and Photonic Quasi-Crystals by Interference Technique

Abstract

Photonic crystals (PCs) are composed of periodic dielectric or metallo-dielectric micro- ornano-structures that affect the propagation of electromagnetic waves in the same way as theperiodic potential in a semiconductor crystal affects the electron motion (Joannopoulos et al.,1995; Sakoda, 2001). The wavelength ranges of disallowed propagation of electromagneticwaves of PCs are called photonic band gaps (PBG), which gives rise to distinct opticalphenomena such as inhibition of spontaneous emission, high-reflecting omni-directionalmirrors and low-threshold PC laser (Yablonovitch, 1987). Besides, the introduction of pointorlinedefectsintoPCsoffersmanyotherpotentialapplications,suchaslowlosswaveguides,cavity resonators, and nanolasers, etc. (Noda et al., 2007; Rinne et al., 2008). The PCs withunique PBG properties therefore can be applied in a wide range of photonic and electronicdevices (Inoue & Ohtaka, 2004). The major challenge for PCs study is the fabrication ofthese structures (Sibilia et al., 2008), with sufficient precision to prevent scattering lossesblurring the crystal properties and with processes that can be robustly mass produced.Various techniques have been proposed to fabricate templates for PCs such as self-assemblyof colloidal particles (Wong et al., 2003; Wu et al., 2008), holographic lithography (HL) (Bergeretal.,1997;Campbelletal.,2000),anddirectlaserwriting(Deubeletal.,2004;Sunetal.,1999),etc. Holographic lithography, in particular, is a very promising and inexpensive technique tofabricate large-area and defect-free PC templates. HL also allows to fabricate structures withunusual high levels of symmetry, called photonic quasi-crystals (PQCs) (Wang et al., 2003),