Zi-Ming Meng

All-optical logic gates based on two-dimensional low-refractive-index nonlinear photonic crystal slabs

This article demonstrates theoretical design of ultracompact all-optical AND, NAND, OR, and NOR gates with two-dimensional nonlinear photonic crystal slabs. Compound Ag-polymer film with a low refractive index and large third-order nonlinearity is adopted as our nonlinear material and photonic crystal cavities with a relatively high quality factor of about 2000 is designed on this polymer slab. Numerical simulations show that all-optical logic gates with low pump-power in the order of tens of MW/cm2 can be achieved. These design results may provide very useful schemes and approaches for the realization of all-optical logic gates with low-cost, low-pump-power, high-contrast and ultrafast response-time.

Fabrication of semiconductor-polymer compound nonlinear photonic crystal slab with highly uniform infiltration based on nano-imprint lithography technique

We present a versatile technique based on nano-imprint lithography to fabricate high-quality semiconductor-polymer compound nonlinear photonic crystal (NPC) slabs. The approach allows one to infiltrate uniformly polystyrene materials that possess large Kerr nonlinearity and ultrafast nonlinear response into the cylindrical air holes with diameter of hundred nanometers that are perforated in silicon membranes. Both the structural characterization via the cross-sectional scanning electron microscopy images and the optical characterization via the transmission spectrum measurement undoubtedly show that the fabricated compound NPC samples have uniform and dense polymer infiltration and are of high quality in optical properties. The compound NPC samples exhibit sharp transmission band edges and nondegraded high quality factor of microcavities compared with those in the bare silicon PC. The versatile method can be expanded to make general semiconductor-polymer hybrid optical nanostructures, and thus it may pave the way for reliable and efficient fabrication of ultrafast and ultralow power all-optical tunable integrated photonic devices and circuits.

Polystyrene Kerr nonlinear photonic crystals for building ultrafast optical switching and logic devices

In recent years all-optical switching and logic devices have received extensive attention due to their potential applications in next generation ultrahigh-speed information processing and optical computing. Kerr nonlinear photonic crystals (NPC) offer a promising route to realize all-optical switching with ultrafast response time and low pump power based on simple and robust physical mechanisms. In this feature article, we present our extensive investigation on Kerr NPCs made from polystyrene, an organic polymer material with large Kerr nonlinearity and extremely fast response time down to several femtoseconds, and their application to build ultrafast, low power, and high contrast optical switching and logic devices. Several relevant issues are discussed and analyzed, including the principal working mechanism of all-optical switching and logic devices in Kerr NPCs, preparation of polystyrene NPCs by means of microfabrication and self-assembly techniques, characterization of optical switching performance by means of femtosecond pump-probe technique, and synthesis of silicon–polystyrene hybrid NPCs by means of nano-imprint technology as a promising route to construct switching, modulating, and logic devices compatible with popular silicon photonics.

Design of Kerr-effect sensitive microcavity in nonlinear photonic crystal slabs for all-optical switching

We design a Kerr-effect sensitive microcavity in hybrid semiconductor nonlinear photonic crystal (PhC) slabs for application in all-optical switching. Our new concept cavity is made from infiltrating the air hole array and coating the surface of usual semiconductor PhC slabs with polystyrene, and let the polystyrene instead of the semiconductor occupy the center of the cavity. Optimization of the cavity design by modulating the structure parameter yields a quality factor Q=1600 and shift magnitude δf≈8.4 nm while pumping the cavity with a light intensity of 80 GW/cm2. This cavity configuration can help to realize very fast response speed and low pump intensity in all-optical switching devices, reduce the demand for rigorous precision during the high-Q PhC cavity fabrication, and allow for easy integration with other integrated optical components.

Ultrafast all-optical switching in one-dimensional semiconductor–polymer hybrid nonlinear photonic crystals with relaxing Kerr nonlinearity

The achievement of ultrafast all-optical switching on chip is a fundamental issue of all-optical integration. A feasible and promising method for this is to combine semiconductor photonic crystals with highly nonlinear polymer materials to form the hybrid nonlinear photonic crystal. In this paper we numerically investigate the femtosecond dynamic response of all-optical switching based on the effect of band gap edge shift in one-dimensional (1D) semiconductor–polymer hybrid nonlinear photonic crystal (NPC) structures. Taking into account the Kerr relaxation time of the polymer and semiconductor materials simultaneously, the introduction of highly nonlinear polymer materials with femtosecond relaxation time can realize all-optical switching in the femtosecond range in spite of the low response speed of the semiconductor materials. The physical origin is the large and ultrafast response Kerr nonlinearity of the polymer materials and this is proved by examining the dependence of switching time on the relaxation speed of the polymer materials. The results can be extended to 2D and 3D NPC structures.

High-Q microcavities in low-index one-dimensional photonic crystal slabs based on modal gap confinement

Recently, various high quality factor photonic crystal microcavities have been demonstrated theoretically and experimentally with only one-dimensional periodicity. However, in most cases high-index materials such as silicon were chosen for easily achievable large photonic bandgap and elaborate refractive index modulation or taper structure is required for reducing radiation loss. Here, we present a design of high-Q microcavities in one-dimensional multilayer polystyrene photonic crystal slab structures with a low-index contrast of 1.59:1. Microcavities are introduced by simply decreasing the thickness of layers at the center region to form a double-heterostructure. A resonant mode with a quality factor up to 20 000 is obtained and found to originate from the modal gap confinement by comparing with a Fabry–Perot cavity. The dependence of the maximal quality factor on the cavity length further reveals that the small group velocity of light within the heterostructure cavity contributes significantly to the h...

Numerical investigation of high-contrast ultrafast all-optical switching in low-refractive-index polymeric photonic crystal nanobeam microcavities

With the development of micro- or nano-fabrication technologies, great interest has been aroused in exploiting photonic crystal nanobeam structures. In this article the design of high-quality-factor (Q) polymeric photonic crystal nanobeam microcavities suitable for realizing ultrafast all-optical switching is presented based on the three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method. Adopting the pump-probe technique, the ultrafast dynamic response of the all-optical switching in a nanobeam microcavity with a quality factor of 1000 and modal volume of 1.22 (λ/n)3 is numerically studied and a switching time as fast as 3.6 picoseconds is obtained. Our results indicate the great promise of applying photonic crystal nanobeam microcavities to construct integrated ultrafast tunable photonic devices or circuits incorporating polymer materials with large Kerr nonlinearity and ultrafast response speed.

Numerical investigation of optical Tamm states in two-dimensional hybrid plasmonic-photonic crystal nanobeams

Optical Tamm states (OTSs) in analogy with its electronic counterpart confined at the surface of crystals are optical surface modes at the interfaces between uniform metallic films and distributed Bragg reflectors. In this paper, OTSs are numerically investigated in two-dimensional hybrid plasmonic-photonic crystal nanobeams (HPPCN), which are constructed by inserting a metallic nanoparticle into a photonic crystal nanobeam formed by periodically etching square air holes into dielectric waveguides. The evidences of OTSs can be verified by transmission spectra and the field distribution at resonant frequency. Similar to OTSs in one-dimensional multilayer structures OTSs in HPPCN can be excited by both TE and TM polarization. The physical origin of OTSs in HPPCN is due to the combined contribution of strong reflection imposed by the photonic band gap (PBG) of the photonic crystal (PC) nanobeam and strong backward scattering exerted by the nanoparticle. For TE, incidence OTSs can be obtained at the frequency near the center of the photonic band gap. The transmissivity and the resonant frequency can be finely tuned by the dimension of nanoparticles. While for TM incidence OTSs are observed for relatively larger metallic nanoparticles compared with TE polarization. The differences between TE and TM polarization can be explained by two reasons. For one reason stronger backward scattering of nanoparticles for TE polarization can be achieved by the excitation of localized surface plasmon polariton of nanoparticles. This assumption has been proved by examining the scattering, absorption, and extinction cross section of the metallic nanoparticle. The other can be attributed to the deep and wide PBG available for TE polarization with less number of air holes compared with TM polarization. Our results show great promise in extending the application scope of OTSs from one-dimensional structures to practical integrated photonic devices and circuits.

Mode analysis for periodically modulated metal slits

We investigate light transport in metal slits filled with a one-dimensional periodic stack of low- and high-index dielectric media. We have analytically extracted an exact independent-mode model where each transverse eigenmode is subject to its own Bragg scattering and dispersion modulation. The analytical model allows for easy analysis of the complex band structures calculated by means of the finite-difference time-domain method, where the physical origin of each band can be identified and assigned to a certain eigenmode of a metal slit. The analytical model is also very efficient and convenient to analyze the optical transmission spectra for these metal slits. The origin of all subtle spectral features can be discerned from the band diagram analysis of the relevant independent eigenmodes. A comparative study shows that the simple analytical independent-mode theory is powerful in handling the intrinsic light transport problems for periodically modulated metal slits and analyzing their complicated spectrum responses.