We present an all-e-beam lithography （EBL） process for the patterning of photonic crystal waveguides. The whole device structures are exposed in two steps. Holes constituting the photonic crystal lattice and defects are first exposed with a small exposure step size （less than 10nm）. With the introduction of the additional proximity effect to compensate the original proximity effect, the shape, size, and position of the holes can be well controlled. The second step is the exposure of the access waveguides at a larger step size （about 30nm） to improve the scan speed of the EBL. The influence of write-field stitching error can be alleviated by replacing the original waveguides with tapered waveguides at the joint of adjacent write-fields. It is found experimentally that a higher exposure efficiency is achieved with a larger step size;however,a larger step size requires a higher dose.
The novel material of photonic crystal makes it possible to control a photon, and the photonic integration will have breakthrough progress due to the application of photonic crystal. It is based on the photonic crystal device that the photonic crystal integration could be realized. Therefore, we should first investigate photonic crystal devices based on the active and the passive semiconductor materials, which may have great potential application in photonic integration. The most practical and important method to fabricate two-dimensional photonic crystal is the micro-manufacture method. In this paper, we summarize and evaluate the fabrication methods of two-dimensional photonic crystal in near-infrared region, including electron beam lithography, selection of mask, dry etching, and some works of ours. This will be beneficial to the study of the photonic crystal in China.
A two-dimensional （2D） photonic crystal waveguide in the Г-K direction with triangular lattice on a silicon-on-insulator （SOI） substrate in the near-infrared band is fabricated by the combination of electron beam lithography and inductively coupled plasma etching. Its transmission characteristics are analysed from the stimulated band diagram by the effective index and the 2D plane wave expansion （PWE） methods. In the experiment, the transmission band edge in a longer wavelength of the photonic crystal waveguide is about 1590 nm, which is in good qualitative agreement with the simulated value. However, there is a disagreement between the experimental and the simulated results when the wavelength ranges from 1607 to 1630 nm, which can be considered as due to the unpolarized source used in the transmission measurement.
A photonic crystal vertical-cavity-surface-emitting laser (PC-VCSEL) with a wavelength of about 850 nm was realized. The direct-current electrically-driven PC-VCSELs with a minimum threshold current of 2 mA and a maximum threshold current of 13.5 mA were obtained. We fabricated a series of PC-VCSEL chips whose lattice constants are in the range from 0.5 to 3 μm with different filling factors, and found that the laser characterization depends on the lattice constant, the filling factor, the size of cavity, etc.
XU XingSheng WANG ChunXia SONG Qian DU Wei HU HaiYang ZHAO ZhiMin LU Lin KAN Qiang CHEN HongDa
This paper reports that a two-dimensional single-defect photonic crystal waveguide in the Г-K direction with triangular lattice on a silicon-on-insulator substrate is fabricated by the combination of electron beam lithography and inductively coupled plasma etching. A ministop band （MSB） is observed by the measurement of transmission characteristics. It results from the coupling between the two modes with the same symmetry, which is analysed from the stimulated band diagram by the effective index and the two-dimensional plane wave expansion methods. The parameter working on the MSB is the ratio of the radius of air holes to the lattice constant, fla. It is obtained that the critical τ/a value determining the occurrence or disappearance of MSB is 0.36. When τ/a is larger than or equal to 0.36, the MSB occurs. However, when τ/a is smaller than 0.36, the MSB disappears.
