Silicon-based honeycomb photonic crystal structures with complete photonic band gap at 1.5μm wavelength

Abstract

Photonic crystal structures consisting of dielectric cylinders arranged in a honeycomb pattern were fabricated in silicon using electron-beam lithography and inductively-coupled plasma dry-etching. Lattice parameters of the fabricated structures (rod diameter ∼0.4μm, distance between the centers of neighboring rods ∼0.85μm, and rod height ∼5.2μm) allowed to achieve and confirm experimentally the complete photonic band gap in vicinity of the optical communications wavelengths around 1.5μm.