Techniques for Fabrication of Three-Dimensional Polymer Photonic Crystals Created

  • Published
  • By Mindy Cooper
  • AFRL Materials and Manufacturing Directorate
Omega Optics Inc. and EM Photonics Inc., under Small Business Innovation Research contracts with the Air Force Research Laboratory Materials and Manufacturing Directorate's Survivability and Sensor Materials Division and Nonmetallic Materials Division have successfully developed fabrication processes for constructing three-dimensional polymeric photonic crystals.

Polymers are an important class of optical materials which have been developed for a wide variety of photonics applications. Photonic crystals represent a powerful method to fabricate new artificially structured materials with optical properties engineered to address specific applications.

"The fusing of these two technologies may benefit a range of important applications such as laser beam steering, biological and chemical sensing, materials for integrated photonics devices, or optical detector arrays," Dr. Rachel Jakubiak, the program manager from the Nonmetallic Materials Division, said.

The capability to fabricate large volume, high quality, three-dimensional polymeric photonic crystals would represent a technical breakthrough that enables a number of applications as mentioned above. When the functional and fabrication flexibility of optical polymers is combined with the optical design power of photonic crystals, revolutionary new material systems are created.

However, realization of the full potential of photonic crystal technology requires fabrication of difficult three dimensional structures. Such a fabrication technique should provide a high degree of uniformity between samples to be useful for application. AFRL sponsored SBIR contracts with Omega Optics, Incorporated, Austin, Texas, and EM Photonics, Newark, Delaware. The two companies were tasked to develop a fabrication method for high quality and large volume three-dimensional polymer photonic crystals.

The Survivability and Sensor Materials Division managed the contract with Omega Optics, Inc. "Omega developed a layer-by-layer approach where the emphasis was placed on quality, since crystal quality is of paramount importance for many applications," Mr. Robert Nelson, program manager for the Survivability and Sensors Materials Division, said. "Resulting crystals showed a high degree of quality over a large area."

The second company, EM Photonics, worked in conjunction with Nonmetallic Materials Division. EM Photonics developed a process using standard lithography techniques and conventional semiconductor equipment, thus, is an automated process that lends itself to high quality, mass production. The technique is also a layer by layer technique. "This technique also allows for the creation of arbitrary three-dimensional structures," Dr. Jakubiak said.

Both companies have moved on to Phase II, where the researchers at EM Photonics and Omega Optics have focused their attention toward the development of a polymeric photonic crystal superprism.