Nanophotonic Filters and Integrated Networks in Flexible 2D Polymer Photonic Crystals

TL;DR

This paper introduces a suspended polymer photonic crystal architecture enabling nanophotonic structures with high quality factors and small mode volumes, leading to enhanced light-matter interactions and integrated optical networks in flexible polymers.

Contribution

The study presents a novel SPPC platform that achieves wavelength-scale optical confinement in low-index polymers, enabling advanced nanophotonic devices and integrated networks.

Findings

Demonstrated nanophotonic band-edge filters, waveguides, and nanocavities with high Q factors.

Achieved mode volumes below 1.7(λ/n)^3, surpassing previous polymer photonics.

Enhanced radiative transitions of embedded emitters with Purcell factors over 100.

Abstract

Polymers have appealing optical, biochemical, and mechanical qualities, including broadband transparency, ease of functionalization, and biocompatibility. However, their low refractive indices have precluded wavelength-scale optical confinement and nanophotonic applications in polymers. Here, we introduce a suspended polymer photonic crystal (SPPC) architecture that enables the implementation of nanophotonic structures typically limited to high-index materials. Using the SPPC platform, we demonstrate nanophotonic band-edge filters, waveguides, and nanocavities featuring quality ($Q$) factors exceeding $2,300$ and mode volumes ($V_{mode}$) below \textbf{$1.7(\lambda/n)^{3}$}. The unprecedentedly high $Q/V_{mode}$ ratio results in a spectrally selective enhancement of radiative transitions of embedded emitters via the cavity Purcell effect with an enhancement factor exceeding 100. Moreover, the SPPC architecture allows straightforward integration of nanophotonic networks, shown here by a waveguide-coupled cavity drop filter with sub-nanometer spectral resolution. The nanoscale optical confinement in polymer promises new applications ranging from optical communications to organic opto-electronics, and nanophotonic polymer sensors.