Temperature distribution inside a porous silicon photonic mirror

Abstract

Photonic devices require precise and high-cost procedures to evaluate their performance which is related to their temperature increase. The fundamental understanding of thermal phenomena, ergo measurement of temperature, inside radiation controlling devices is of great relevance to study their performance. In this paper, we carry out a comprehensive campaign of experiments to study the temperature profile inside a porous silicon multilayer 1D photonic structure by using a thermographic camera. In particular, we have analyzed broad-range reflective devices and found that the electromagnetic radiation does not travel beyond the photonic structure showing a clear maximum inside of it. We have compared this result with a pure silicon wafer under the interaction with the same radiation. To compare these samples, we used a normalization procedure that can be implemented on many microstructured devices to simplify their performance evaluation.