Diffractive Optics
Underlying all of the
optical designs of photonic crystals, grating couplers,
silicon
photonics and plasmonic devices is the capability of predicting optical
performance
before having to fabricate and test optical devices.
Numerical modeling has become extremely important as the difficulty of
fabrication is increased, and the three-dimensional complexity of
optical structures no longer permits intuitive design approaches to microcavities. Therefore, one of the papers with a very significant
impact was the paper on modal reflectivity calculation in finite-depth
two-dimensional photonic crystal microcavities by an undergraduate
student in my group, Brian D’Urso in 1998. In this work, we developed
finite different time domain modeling capabilities that continue to be
used and refined for optical device design. Indeed, the use of this
design software was tremendously important in the endeavors of building
CMOS photonics in silicon foundries, as the cost for ultra-violet mask
sets prohibits the empirical evaluation of devices without pre-screening
through calculations.
