Abstract

Photonic crystals (PhCs) can be used to provide remarkable control over the emission and propagation of light for new applications in optoelectronics and in photonic integrated circuits. In particular, PhC band edge lasers are attractive as they combine low threshold operation and well defined output beam, with the possibility of simple process steps. For this application, polymers have become increasingly important because of their flexible characteristics for the device fabrication and their highly tunable optical properties. However, the fabrication of PhCs often requires elaborate and expensive techniques, such as electron-beam lithography and reactive ion etching. For the last ten years, nanoimprint lithography (NIL) has become an alternative cost-efficient technology to replicate features with a sub-10 nm resolution. We show here the fabrication and optical characterization of polymer PhC band edge lasers fabricated by NIL in a thick polymer layer (mr-NIL 6000) doped with rhodamine 6G on glass substrates.

© 2007 IEEE