Development of a novel fabrication process for a mechanically tunable 2-D photonic crystal

Abstract

Photonic crystals (PCs) have been the subject of intense research over the last two decades. Various types of photonic crystals have been fabricated using a host of techniques. Most of the ones that were produced earlier on had an invariable band gap. However, in recent years a variety of methods have been explored to achieve "tunability" of the PC band gap. Till date, the maximum tunability achieved in the most popular type of PCs using liquid crystals has been around -15 percent. Thus, there exists a large gap which can still be tuned, given the optimal means. Such a novel means using a mechanical technique, namely MEMS, was proposed and validated recently, though just theoretically.