液晶调制的光子晶体可控偏光片和光开关

Photonic crystal field-sensitive polarizer and switch modulated by nemaic liquid crystals

与介质柱型光子晶体相比,空气孔光子晶体更易于制作和集成而更有应用价值.采用平面波展开法证实了填充液晶的二维三角形分布的空气孔光子晶体方向能隙的可调节性.数值模拟结果表明:1)通过外界电场控制空气孔中所填充的相列液晶的方向可以对光子晶体的方向能隙进行调节,这种可调节性可用于制作场敏偏光片.这与Liu等人研究介质柱型光子晶体的结论相类似;2)用phenylacetylene型液晶替代5CB液晶作为填充物质所得到的空气孔光子晶体偏光片可使用的频率范围显著增大.在此基础上,还研究了填充液晶的光子晶体波导传输谱线的可调节性对特定波长的光切断和开通控制的原理,实现了与以往光开关原理不同的光子晶体光开关.

Compared with the photonic crystal （PC） structures composed of Si circular, the PC structrures composed of triangular lattice of air holes in a dielectric slab are more easily fabricated and integrated. The tunability of directional band gap in a twodimensional photonic crystal of air holes in a semiconductor matrix is demonstrated numerically, using the plane wave expansion calculation. Numerical simulations show that the photonic crystal band gaps are modulated by nematic liquid crystals infiltrated in the air holes. Then the band gap can be controlled easily under the influence of the external electric field. So the results can serve as a field-sensitive polarizer. These results are in agreement with that of Liu. However, the tunable field-sensitive polarizer based on the phenylacetylene liquid crystals instead of 5CB liquid crystals has the wider frequency range. Moreover, the transmission spectrum of the photonic crystal infiltrated by liquid crystal is analyzed, using finite difference time domain （FDTD） method. Numerical simulations show that the shift of the spectrum modulated by liquid crystal can be used to design a novel switch.