Conceptual approaches used to analyse optical properties of surface-addressable photonic crystal membrane (PCM) resonators will be briefly presented. It will be pointed out that these photonic structures can also be referred to as high-contrast gratings (HCGs) and that bridges can be made with other approaches proposed in the recent literature to analyse the latter. It will be demonstrated that high reflection mirrors, with arbitrarily adjustable bandwidth, can be designed along the PCM approach, where leaky wave-guided slow Bloch modes play the primary role. Implementation examples of such reflectors are presented, with a special emphasis on the use of large bandwidth PCM reflector: vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) using hybrid III-V / Si microcavities, based on double PCM reflectors, have been recently fabricated. These devices are meant to be compatible with their heterogeneous integration on complementary metal-oxide-silicon (CMOS). It will be shown that the operation of this new class of VCSEL is based on hybrid optical modes, whose properties can be fully monitored by appropriate design of the PCM reflectors. For example, specific architectures can be targeted for laser emission either in free space, or into silicon waveguides. The latest achievements in technological processing, optical mode engineering and laser performances will be presented as well.

Date Published: 16 February 2012
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 8270, High Contrast Metastructures, 827003 (16 February 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.905975

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8270:
High Contrast Metastructures
Connie J. Chang-Hasnain; Fumio Koyama; Alan Eli Willner; Weimin Zhou, Editor(s)