Porous silicon photonic crystals

Abstract

Porous silicon based one, two and three dimensional photonic crystals (PCs) have been reviewed. Apropriate selection of the fabrication parameters can be used to form a photonic band gap of tunable width in the required spectral region. Due to the ease of fabrication of 1D PCs, it has been shown to be useful for the demonstration of some physical phenomenon and numerous works have been dedicated to photonic and sensing applications. The fabrication of 2D PCs requires the prestructuring of the silicon surface and the structures with the defects for the incorporation of different materials have opened a wide range of applications. Although the fabrication of 3D PCs, needs the combination of more than two tehniques, the fabrication of perfect mirrors in the infrared region has been shown.