One-Step Combined-Nanolithography-and-Photolithography for a 2D Photonic Crystal TM Polarizer

Abstract

Photonic crystals have been widely investigated since they have great potential to manipulate the flow of light in an ultra-compact-scale and enable numerous innovative applications. 2D slab photonic crystals for the telecommunication C band at around 1550 nm have multi-scale structures that are typically micron-scale waveguides and deep sub-micron-scale air hole arrays. Several steps of nanolithography and photolithography are usually used for the fabrication of multi-scale photonic crystals. In this work, we report a one-step lithography process to pattern both micron and deep sub-micron features simultaneously for the 2D slab photonic crystal using combined-nanoimprint-andphotolithography. As a demonstrator, a 2D silicon photonic crystal transverse magnetic (TM) polarizer was fabricated, and the operation was successfully demonstrated.