THE OPTICAL TRANSMISSION OF ONE-DIMENSIONAL

PHOTONIC CRYSTAL

A. PETCU, L. PREDA
Faculty of Applied Sciences, Politehnica University of Bucharest, Splaiul Independenþei 313,
060042 – Bucharest, Romania
E-mail: petcu.andreea@gmail.com
Received October 10, 2008

In this article we used our own MATLAB algorithm based on the transfer
matrix method (TMM) to simulate the transmission of a one-dimensional photonic
crystal composed of two layers: A = SiO2 and B = TiO2 with the corresponding
refractive indexes nA = 1.45 and nB = 2.65. The studied structures were generated
starting from the one-dimensional Thue-Morse sequence, for example: (AB)16,
(ABBA)8 and (ABBABAAB)4. We analyze the influence of various defects: the type
of the material used in the defect layer (TiO2, As2Se3) thickness and position of the
defect layer, upon the optical transmission. Our simulations for such photonic
crystals with a photorefractive defect layer show a possible application of these types
of structures to optical commutation.
Key words: photonic crystal, titanium dioxide, Thue-Morse sequence, optical
transmission.

1. INTRODUCTION

There has been growing interest in the development of easily fabricated

photonic-band-gap materials operating at the optical frequencies. These are
periodic dielectric materials exhibiting frequency regions where electromagnetic
waves cannot propagate. The reason for the interest in photonic bandgap
materials arises from the possible applications of those materials in several
scientific and technical areas such as filters, waveguides, optical switches,
cavities, design of more efficient lasers, etc [1, 2].
In this article we are analyzing a one-dimensional photonic crystal
composed of two layers: A = SiO2 and B = TiO2 with the refractive indexes
nA = 1.45 and nB = 2.65, from the point of view of its optical transmission. We have
created an algorithm based on the transfer matrix method (TMM) [3] in MATLAB
and used it to determine the optical transmission of our photonic structures.

Paper presented at the National Conference of Physics, September 10–13, 2008,
Bucharest-Mãgurele, Romania.

Rom. Journ. Phys., Vol. 54, Nos. 5– 6 , P. 539–546, Bucharest, 2009

540 A. Petcu, L. Preda 2

The studied structures were generated starting from the one-dimensional

Thue-Morse sequence, for example: (AB) 16, (ABBA)8 and (ABBABAAB)4 [4].
We analyze the influence of various defects: the type of the material used
in the defect layer (As2Se3) thickness and position of the defect layer, upon the
optical transmission [5].

2. CALCULUS METHOD

The transfer matrix method (TMM) is widely used for the description of
the properties of stacked layers and is extensively presented in [6]. We
implemented such an algorithm in MATLAB and used it to determine the optical
transmission of our photonic structures. In our approach we considered isotropic
layers, nonmagnetic and a normal incidence of the incident light.
Let us consider for investigation a stack of m layers perpendicular on the
OZ axis as it can be seen in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 – Schematic representation of a multilayered structure.

Using the notations given in Fig. 1, we have considered known the

refractive index of the medium from where the beam of light emerges n0 = 1
(air), the refractive index of the medium in which the beam of light exits
ns = 1.52 (glass), the intensities of the electric and magnetic fields Em and Hm in
the suport layer of glass.
To determine the electric and magnetic fields in the air, E0 and H0, we
solved the following system:

ª E0 º ª Em º
«H » M1 ˜ M2 ! ˜ M m « » (1)
¬ 0¼ ¬Hm ¼
3 The optical transmission of photonic crystal 541

ª i ˜ sin I j º
« cos I j nj »,
where Mj « » j 1! m , (2)
«¬i ˜ n j ˜ sin I j cos I j »¼

and I j k ˜ n j ˜ d j the phase variation of the wave passing the layer j, k being the

wavenumber depending of the wavelength of incident light by k 2S .

O
Replacing (2) in (1) and using the general definitions of reflection and
transmission coefficients, we arrived to the following formulas of the optical
reflectivity and transmission:
2
H0
E0 
n0 4 ˜ ns
R , T (3)
H0 H0 2
E0 
n0 n0 ˜ E0 
n0
Our code is based on these equations for reflectivity and transmission
calculus.

3. STRUCTURES DESIGN

The studied structures were generated starting from the one-dimensional

Thue-Morse sequence [7]. The one-dimensional Thue-Morse sequence of N
order, TMN, is a binary sequence of two symbols ‘A’ and ‘B’. TMN+1 is
generated from TMN in which we substitute ‘A’ with ‘AB’ and ‘B’ with ‘BA’.
Thus TM0 = {A}, TM1 = {AB}, TM2 = {ABBA}, TM3 = {ABBABAAB} etc.
In our simulations we have used one-dimensional photonic crystals of the
following types: (AB)16, (ABBA)8 and (ABBABAAB)4, where A and B are two
isotropic media with the refractive indexes nA and nB.
We have considered the following particular case of one-dimensional
photonic crystal composed of two types of layers: A = SiO2 and B = TiO2 with
the refractive indexes:
nA a1 ˜ e a2 ˜O  a3 ˜ e a4 ˜O , a1 0.256, a2 0.0071, a3 1.548, a4 8.54 ˜ 10 6

nB b1 ˜ eb2 ˜O  b3 ˜ e b4 ˜O , b1 14.59, b2 0.0086, b3 2.561, b4 2.95 ˜ 10 5.

These formulas were obtained by fitting the experimental data taken from a
public database [8] to a suitable mathematical function.
As it can be seen in the formulas above, we have taken in consideration the
refractive index’s dependence of the wavelength of the incident radiation.
542 A. Petcu, L. Preda 4

4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

4.1. OPTICAL TRANSMISSION OF 1D PC WITHOUT DEFECTS

In these experiments we have kept constant the thickness of the layers dA

and dB and we have varied the wavelength O  (0.4, 1.8) Pm.
Fig. 2 presents the optical transmission of the three types of the studied
photonic crystals versus the wavelength of the light beam so that we can observe
easily the band-gaps.

a) b)

c)
Fig. 2 – The optical transmission function of the wavelength of the incident radiation for 1D PC
of different types: a) (AB) 16; b) (ABBA)8; c) (ABBABAAB)4.

One easily observes that the (AB)16 type photonic crystals have two band
gaps, while the (ABBA)8 and (ABBABAAB)4 type crystals have three band-gaps.
The values are given in Table 1.
It is also observed that the (ABBABAAB)4 type crystals have wider
band-gaps than the (ABBA)8 type crystals. The maximum band-gap is obtained
5 The optical transmission of photonic crystal 543

Table 1
The photonic band-gaps for (AB)16, (ABBA)8 and (ABBABAAB)4 one-dimensional
photonic crystal
Crystal’s type Band-gaps The midgap wavelength The width of the
[Pm] of the gap band-gaps
[Pm] [Pm]
(AB)16 O  (0.52, 0.56) 0.54 0.04
O  (1.36, 1.75) 1.555 0.39
(ABBA)8 O = 0.47 0.47 0
O  (0.62, 0.64) 0.63 0.02
O  (1, 1.06) 1.03 0.06
(ABBABAAB)4 O  (0.49, 0.5) 0.495 0.01
O  (0.58, 0.59) 0.585 0.01
O  (1.16, 1.3) 1.23 0.14

for a (AB)16 type structure. We have also observed that only the (AB)16 type
structure has a band-gap around O = 1.5 Pm.

4.2. THE OPTICAL TRANSMISSION OF 1D PC WITH DEFECTS

As we have already seen, only the (AB)16 photonic structure has a band gap
around the wavelength of interest, O = 1.5 Pm. For this reason, only the influence
of defect layers in (AB)16 multilayer structure will be investigated. In the
following, we present the results obtained for two kind of defects: first, a
defective layer of B = TiO2 type having the refractive index nB and a thickness
of d = 146 nm was introduced, in the (AB)16 structure; secondly, a third type of
layer, C, with photorefractive properties. We used As2Se3 with the refraction
index n3 = 2.77. In these simulations we have kept constant the thickness of the
A and B type layers: dA = 2.67˜10–7 m, dB = 1.46˜10–7 m.
Fig. 3b shows the transmission spectrum of a (AB)16 type PC with a B type
defect layer inserted in position 8 (after 8 (AB) type groups). In this case we
have obtained a localized state with an optical transmission higher than 60% for
O = 1.51 Pm.
In the case in which we have introduced, in the structure of the (AB)16 type
photonic crystal, in position 8, a C = As2Se3 type defect layer, we have obtained
a localized state with an optical transmission lower than 10% for O = 1.53 Pm
(see Fig. 3c).
As it is already known [9], the materials like As2Se3 can easily modify their
refractive index function of the intensity of a certain incident radiation. To simulate
544 A. Petcu, L. Preda 6

a) b)

c)
Fig. 3 – The optical transmission of the (AB) 16 type PC: a) without defect; b) with B type defect
inserted in position 8; c) with C = As2Se3 type defect inserted in position 8.

these changes, we have considered the refractive index variation for the C layer
as being described by: (nc)2 n32 ˜ (1  F), where F  [0, 0.05].
From our simulations we have observed that the transmission in the
localized state depends on the variation of the refractive index of the C type
defect layer as it can be seen in Fig. 4. The thickness of the defect layer is
dC dC0  0.03 ˜ 10 7 m, where dC0 1.39 ˜ 10 7 m .
So, changing the refractive index of the defective layer by F = 0.038 one
can obtain a switch from transmission zero to a 50% transmission.
The value of the optical transmission in the localized state depends also on
the position in which we have inserted the As2Se3 layer (the number of (AB)
groups after we have inserted the defect layer) as it can be seen in the graphic
below (Fig. 5).
The maximum value of transmission coefficient is obtained for the position
9 of type C defect layer.
7 The optical transmission of photonic crystal 545

Fig. 4 – The optical transmission in the

localized state function of the variation
of the refraction index of the C type
defect layer.

Fig. 5 – The optical transmission in the

localized state function of the position
in which we insert the defect layer.

5. CONCLUSIONS

In our simulations we have studied one-dimensional photonic crystals

whose structure was generated starting from the one-dimensional Thue-Morse
sequence. From the results obtained we can say that the SiO2/TiO2 type structure
is suitable for the construction of one-dimensional photonic crystals with the
following photonic band-gaps: the (AB)16 type crystals have two band-gaps at
O  (0.49, 0.55) and O  (1.33, 1.8), the (ABBA)8 type crystals have three
band-gaps at O  (0.44, 0.45), O  (0.61, 0.63) and O  (1, 1.06) and the
(ABBABAAB)4 type crystals have three band-gaps at O  (0.47, 0.48),
O  (0.55, 0.58) and O  (1.15, 1.3). Only (AB)16 1D structure has band-gap
around 1.5 Pm.
The insertion of a defect layer in the structure of the one-dimensional
photonic crystal with a higher refractive index than those of the two layers found
546 A. Petcu, L. Preda 8

in the crystal’s structure generates a localized state at O = 1.53 Pm in the case of

the (AB)16 type photonic crystals. The transmission in this localized state
depends on the thickness, the variation of the refraction index and the position in
which we have inserted the defect layer.

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