Design and fabrication of a light emitting diode using a two-dimensional photonic crystal

Abstract

Photonic Crystals are the optical analog of semiconductor crystals. A periodic variation in the dielectric constant may give rise to a photonic bandgap that forbids the propagation of certain frequency light in one, two, and three dimensions. A two dimensional photonic crystal may be used to directly modify the spontaneous emission of a light-emitting diode by eliminating the coupling of light to guided modes. In this work, the design and fabrication of a two-dimensional photonic crystal light-emitting diode with an emission wavelength of 980 nm is discussed. The 980 nm emission wavelength requires the fabrication of l 00 nm feature sizes in a GaAs-based materials system. The nanoscale feature sizes and various III-V materials employed present many fabrication challenges.