Silicon-on-insulator photonic bandgap structures for future microphotonic devices

Abstract

Silicon on insulator (SOI) substrates provide a naturally good template for the introduction of optics at the microelectronics device level, due to the high refractive index contrast between Si and SiO2. If one is able to control the propagation of photons in the material, functional devices like, filters, modulators or resonant detectors can be envisioned. One can even imagine to make light emitters since recent progress showed room temperature light emission from doped silicon material or nano-crystalline silicon. This suggests that combining these new materials with low volume optical resonators will allow to make efficient light sources based on Si and opens a route towards CMOS compatible silicon-based light emitters. A promising way to integrate this functions in compact large-scale photonic circuits is to use photonic crystals (PCs). In this work we will present the design, fabrication and optical characterization of SOI based PC resonators engineered to change the emissio rate and/or extraction of photons from the Si layer. Different structures have been studied: vertical microcavities, in-plane 2D hexagonal cavities and defect-less structures and results demonstrating strong light extraction enhancement will be shown together with calculations made by plane wave expansion techniques and FDTD.© (2004) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.