Photonic crystal integrated circuits: technology and devices towards integration

摘要

Photonic crystals are structures that have great potential for the realisation of future photonic integrated circuits. In this paper we highlight our method for the fabrication and characterisation of these structures in the GaAs/AlGaAs material system. Moreover, we review briefly the wider issues relating to the quality of fabrication and physical characterisation of photonic crystal components. In addition, we present novel transmission properties of channel waveguides that result in mini-stopbands as well as showing that the propagation loss is less than 50 cm~(-1) outside these stopbands. Another useful element is the hexagonal microcavity and we show results demonstrating the integration of this cavity with both a channel and coupled-cavity waveguides, which represents a significant step towards photonic crystal inlegrated circuits.