Photonic Crystal Spectrometer

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel optical spectrometer that uses photonic crystal patterns to spatially resolve and analyze light spectra by outcoupling waveguided light onto a camera, enabling compact and efficient spectral measurements.

Contribution

The paper presents a new photonic crystal-based spectrometer design that combines nanofabrication and imaging to perform spectral analysis without traditional dispersive elements.

Findings

Successfully characterized a white LED spectrum

Demonstrated spatially resolved intensity mapping

Validated the spectrometer's spectral accuracy

Abstract

We demonstrate a new kind of optical spectrometer employing photonic crystal patterns to outcouple waveguided light from a transparent substrate. This spectrometer consists of an array of photonic crystal patterns, nanofabricated in a polymer on a glass substrate, combined with a camera. The camera captures an image of the light outcoupled from the patterned substrate; the array of patterns produces a spatially resolved map of intensities for different wavelength bands. The intensity map of the image is converted into a spectrum using the photonic crystal pattern response functions. We present a proof of concept by characterizing a white LED with our photonic crystal spectrometer.