AbstractControl over the 1.5 µm emission from erbium is desirable for communication and computational technologies because the erbium emission falls in the window of maximum transmission for silica based fiber optics. Tunable, narrow, directional, and enhanced erbium emission from silicon based 1-D photonic bandgap structures will be demonstrated. The structures are prepared by anodic etching of crystalline silicon and consist of two highly reflecting Bragg reflectors sandwiching an active layer. The cavities are doped by electro-migrating the erbium ions into the porous silicon matrix, followed by high temperature oxidation. By controlling the oxidation temperature, porosity, and thickness of the structure, the position of the erbium emission is tuned to emit in regions where the normal erbium emission is very weak. The erbium emission from the cavity is narrowed to a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 12 nm with a cavity quality factor Q of 130, highly directional with a 20 degree emission cone around the normal axis, and enhanced by more than one order of magnitude when compared to its lateral emission. Erbium photoluminescence (PL) from porous silicon 2-D photonic bandgap structures is also demonstrated.
Quasi-normal-modes description of transmission properties for photonic bandgap structures