Fabrication of a 3D Photonic Crystal Structure by Using the Wedge-shaped Cell Method

Abstract

Because of an increase in applications for photonic crystals, many efforts have been made to fabricate large-area, uniform photonic crystal structures, but the fabrication of such photonic crystal structures is not easy because of some limitations in optimizing both the uniformity and the large area. In this paper, we examined the wedge-shaped cell method, which has advantage for forming uniform photonic crystal structure because it generates a meniscus in line. Optimum conditions for the fabrication process were experimentally determined by measuring and analyzing the structural and the optical properties of the fabricated photonic crystal structure, and by comparing transmission spectra, we confirmed that the photonic crystal structure fabricated by using the wedge-shaped cell method had better photonic band gap property than the photonic crystal structure fabricated by using the vertical deposition method.