Designing waveguides and microcavities in hybrid architectures based on direct and inverse opals

摘要

In the past few years, self assembly colloidal structures based on opals have received large attention because they offer a cost-effective way of designing ultra-compact and efficient all-optical devices. In this study, we present various approaches to design waveguides and cavities in three-dimensional opal-based photonic crystals. Three practical designs with size suitable to telecommunication technologies at 1.55 μm are presented. First, we show that the creation of a hexagonal superlattice of defects in a direct monolayer of spheres yields the opening of a photonic band gap below the light line so that the inclusion of a linear defect in this structure enables the creation of a theoretically lossless waveguide. We also propose the design of a waveguide in a 2D-3D heterostructure, where a graphite lattice of rods is sandwiched between two inverse opal claddings. This structure enables single-mode waveguiding with a maximal bandwidth of 129 nm. Finally, we give the design of a linear cavity, whose quality factor is increased by a factor of 5 when surrounded by an inverse opal.