Analytical determination of the stop band tuning of photonic crystals infiltrated with liquid crystals

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple analytical method based on the Von-Laue diffraction condition to predict the tunable optical stop band shifts in liquid crystal infiltrated photonic crystals, facilitating easier design of tunable optical devices.

Contribution

It presents a new analytical formula for calculating stop band shifts in photonic crystals infiltrated with liquid crystals, validated against plane wave method calculations.

Findings

The formula accurately predicts stop band shifts across diffraction orders.

The method simplifies the analysis of tunable photonic crystal optical properties.

Comparison shows good agreement with numerical plane wave method results.

Abstract

We demonstrate that the tuning of the optical properties of a photonic crystal infiltrated with liquid crystal can be calculate using the Von-Laue diffraction condition. We present a simple formula to predict the shift of the stop band for all the diffraction orders using an effective index of the composite structure. We consider that our formula is useful to determine in a simple manner the shift of the optical properties of tunable photonic crystals. We compare the accuracy of our method with calculations obtained with the Plane Wave Method.