The enlargement of high reflectance range in ultra-narrow bandpass filter with disordered one-dimensional photonic crystal

Abstract

The conventional ultra-narrow bandpass filter structure has only a very limited width of high-reflectance range. This study, by introducing disorder into one-dimensional (1D) photonic crystal, attempts to enlarge the width of high-reflectance range while keeping the ultra-narrow bandpass. Enlargement by 46.8% was obtained after theoretical design. Since this structure contains some degree of disorder already, it has a strong tolerance of the variation of layer thicknesses. Unlike studies using conventional periodic structures, theoretical statistical results in this study demonstrate that high quality remains even after allowing for ±5% variation of layer thicknesses. This indicates that only a very low thickness control precision is required in the future and the production difficulty is immensely lowered. To put the construction to test, a structure has been developed and demonstrated by a magnetron reactive sputtering coating system, which agrees with the theoretical result very well. By introducing disorder into the periodic 1D photonic crystal structure, the high-reflectance range is significantly extended by 37%, with an ultra-narrow pass band of 0.8 nm and intensity of 82%.