Photonic-Band Crystal WDM Tunable Filter

The goal of the proposed Phase I work is to demonstrate the feasibility of developing 1.55 mm WDM tunable filters by using photonic band crystal, and to establish the technical foundation for the fabrication of the tunable filter. This proposed innovativeapproach will permit the development of integrated microscale tunable filters based on Si technology. It has the following characteristics; i) Device size can be drastically reduced to the 10 ¿m scale, which is at least three orders of magnitude smallerin area, ii) Alignment of the optical fiber at the input and output edges does not need to be precise due to no waveguide structure, iii) There is no zero order and higher order diffraction that creates unwanted ghost beams. That is almost 100% conversionto the out put beam.This new type of WMD tunable filters based on the photonic crystal and Si foundry will reduce the size of device by three order of magnitude and much improved performances. It will be applicable to multi-channel dense WDM filters,routers, and switches in fiber optic communications as well as military applications. This would revolutionize the device technology in fiber optic communication.