Systematic design study of waveguides and waveguide bends in diamond-structured photonic crystals

Abstract

The lack of a systematic design strategy to precisely control bending and guiding of photons in three dimensions, as well as the requirement of advancements in the fabrication technology for realizing large-area, defect-free three-dimensional (3D) photonic crystals, has been the main hurdle toward exploiting the potential of three-dimensional photonic crystals. Here, we demonstrate a new, to the best of our knowledge, design methodology for 3D waveguides and bends in diamond-structured photonic crystals. The manipulation of photons in 3D by incorporating two combinations of four different linear defect configurations in two different photonic crystal topologies of a diamond lattice, namely rod-connected diamond and inverse-rod-connected diamond, has been successfully demonstrated. We have also shown 90-deg waveguide bends with near zero dB bending loss.