Preparation of one-dimensional porous silicon photonic quantum-well structures

Abstract

One-dimensional porous silicon (PSi) photonic quantum-well structures have been electrochemically fabricated and spectroscopically characterized. The photonic well in the structure is a photonic crystal (PC) consisting of alternately stacked high- and low-refractive-index PSi layers. Discrete states are observed in both reflectance and transmission spectra. It is found that the number of confined states appearing in the photonic bandgap of the photonic barrier depends on the number of periods adopted in the well PC. Thus, increased confined photonic states can be created simply by increasing the number of periods of the well PC in the structures.