Study of photonic band gap robustness in disordered polymer photonic crystals under hydrostatic pressure

Abstract

Transmission properties of light through disorder polymeric photonic crystals have been studied. The photonic crystals made of polymeric multilayers with Gaussian distribution of layer thickness are found to exhibit robust photonic bandgap (PBG). The transmission characteristics of different random structures starting from periodic to gradually perturbed structures have been systematically investigated. The numerical examples illustrate that the photonic structure can sustain its PBG for a large range of disorder up to σ = 100 nm, which is nearly equal to 15% of the layer thickness calculated from the quarter wavelength condition for a normal incidence of light. It also quantitatively demonstrates the average transmission of the PBG region is becomes flatter due to the random nature of the structure. The proposal provides that the polymeric photonic crystal may be employed for potential applications for robust integrated photonic devices and optical communication systems.