1D photonic crystal fabricated by wet etching of silicon

Wet anisotropic etching of (1 1 0) silicon for the fabrication of one-dimensional photonic crystals has been studied. This showed that the technique allows formation of various periodically grooved structures with wide photonic band gaps in the middle IR spectral range suitable for microphotonic elements in a silicon chip. Once infiltrated with nematic liquid crystal, grooved Si forms composite photonic band gap structures. The “gap maps” for both the empty matrices of periodically grooved Si and the composites have been calculated, the structures were fabricated and characterized by means of FTIR spectroscopy.