Photonic-Crystal-Based Devices for Commercial Applications

Several analog-to-digital converter (ADC) devices and part of a multispectral receiver have been designed, fabricated, and tested to demonstrate their feasibility as part of an effort to establish the organizational and technological foundation for development of photonic-crystal-based devices for commercial and military applications. Also known as photonic-band-gap devices, photonic crystals contain periodic structures having feature sizes in the submicron range — less than the wavelengths of light that the devices are intended to handle. Photonic crystals can be fabricated by techniques used in the integrated-circuit and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) industries.