Fano Resonance Photonic Crystal Membrane Lasers and Filters for Integrated Silicon Photonics

Fano resonance, known from atomic physics, has been employed for a wide variety of nanophotonic structures, such as quantum dots, photonic crystal, plasmonics, and metamaterials, and so on. With modal dispersion engineering, Fano filters and reflectors can all be realized in single layer dielectric photonic crystal structures. Based on Fano resonance principle in 2D air hole photonic crystal slabs, combined with crystalline semiconductor nanomembrane transfer printing techniques, we have demonstrated a range of ultra-compact high performacne photonic and electronic devices on silicon and on flexible substrates.

By sandwiching InGaAsP quantum well cavity in between two single –layer silicon Fano resonance photonic crystal membrane reflectors (MR), membrane reflector vertical-cavity surface- emitting lasers (MR-VCSELs) were proposed and demonstrated. We will report our recent progresses on this new type of membrane lasers, which can be built on silicon, and on flexible substrates.

Ultra-compact high quality factor optical filters have also been realized experimentally, based on Fano resonances in single or coupled bi-layer photonic crystal slabs, without or with lattice displacements. Theoretically, with the control of lattice displacement between two coupled photonic crystal slabs layers, optical filter Q factors can approach 211,000,000 or infinite. Experimentally optical filters with quality factors up to 80,000 have been demonstrated.     

Finally, we will review other type of Fano resonance based optical structures, such as vertical to in-plane couplers, and beam routing structures, for integrated silicon photonics. The convergence of nanomembranes and Fano resonance photonic crystals offer unprecedented opportunities for unique electronic and photonic devices for 3D multi-functional Si CMOS photonics, flexible, bio-inspired/integrated photonic/electronic systems, and multi-spectral multi-color infrared imaging and sensing systems, etc.  

The work was supported by US AFOSR, ARO and NSF.