On-chip natural assembly of silicon photonic bandgap crystals

Under Construction

Original Entry: Ian Bruce Burgess Fall 2009

References

1. Y.A. Vlasov, X.-Z. Bo, J.C. Sturm, D.J. Norris, Nature 414, 289-293 (2001).

2. A. Blanco et al., Nature 405, 437-440 (2000).

Summary

This paper describes the fabrication of a silicon 3D photonic crystal with sufficiently low defect densities to maintain the complete bandgap over a large volume. The structure is fabricated by infiltrating a thin-layer colloidal crystal with Si by low pressure chemical vapor deposition, and then removing the template of the colloidal crystal. What allows improved crystal quality in the colloidal opals over previous work [2], is the use of the meniscus-driven vertical deposition technique as opposed to gravitationally-driven sedimentation.