Sandwich-typed resonator cavity based on a regular photonic crystal nanobeam

Abstract

The authors propose and numerically examine a two-component design of an optical nanocavity. The design utilizes the effective medium theory. Such a nanocavity consists, first, of a photonic crystal nanobeam, in which the photonic crystal unit cell is not changed. Second, the cavity contains a fragment of some supplementary material of the size of several or several tens of photonic crystal unit cells. This paper describes the cavity model in which the both components have an equal thickness and can be fabricated from the same silicon wafer. While combining the two components, the defect has formed, in which the resonant mode can be excited. The advantages of the proposed cavity model are reported, particularly the easiness with which the cavities array can be fabricated and the possibility of implementing electrically pumped light sources and amplifiers. The fabrication tolerances of the proposed nanocavity were investigated. It has been found that existing structural layers alignment technologies can be used for fabricating the suggested cavity.