ISSN 1060-992X, Optical Memory and Neural Networks (Information Optics), 2009, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 8592.

Allerton Press, Inc., 2009.

Three-Dimensional Simulation of a Nanophotonics Device with Use of Fullwave Software1

A. G. Nalimova, b, A. A. Kovaleva, b, V. V. Kotlyara, b, and V. A. Soifera, b
a

Image Processing Systems Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia b S.P. Korolyov Samara State Aerospace University, Russia e-mail: alanko@smr.ru
Received March 12, 2009; in nal form, March 19, 2009

AbstractUsing the FullWAVE software (www.rsoftdesign.com) that implements the nite-difference FDTD-method of solving Maxwells equations, we simulate the performance of a three-dimensional nanophotonics device comprising a subwavelength diffraction grating, a wide and a narrow planar waveguide, and a photonic crystal (PhC) Mikaelian lens located in a thin silicon lm coated on a substrate containing a three-period Bragg mirror, with each period made up of silicon + silica layer. The device is intended to couple a focused laser beam with the focal spot of 3 4.6 m2 and wavelength 1.55 m into a planar waveguide of width 500 nm, resulting in a 125-fold compression of the input beam cross-section. The modeling has shown that the coupling efciency amounts to 32% of the energy of the linearly polarized elliptic Gaussian beam focused onto the grating and 52% when a plane wave segment is incident onto the grating. For comparison, the grating-unaided coupling of light into the same device by the butt-coupling of light into the wide waveguides silicon lm gives the efciency as low as 8%. Keywords: FDTD-method, photonic crystal lens, coupling of two different waveguides, light input into a waveguide, Bragg mirror, nanophotonics. DOI: 10.3103/S1060992X09020040

1. INTRODUCTION When solving nanophotonics problems that emerge in telecommunications technologies, a popular approach involves a planar silicon-on-insulator (SIO) technology similar to integrated chips [1]. In this case, light propagates in wire bers of width 450 nm manufactured in a 220-nm-thick lm or passes through a 2D photonic crystal waveguide of width 300500 nm. Light is transported to nanophotonics devices using a single mode ber of diameter 9 m. Thus, if the ber end is put in direct contact with the planar waveguide, only 0.1% of light energy can be coupled into the latter. This challenge is conventionally met by fabricating a 10 10 m 1D subwavelength grating of period 580600 nm and groove depth 50 nm in the silicon lm [2]. The 2D modeling of such a binary silicon-on-quartz grating shows the coupling efciency of 28% [2]. There are tilted gratings manufactured in InP with theoretically estimated coupling efciency of 59% and the experimentally shown efciency of 30% [3]. In [4] an extra lens was used to focus the output light onto the diffraction grating. Note that the calculated coupling efciency obtained by 2D modeling amounted to 67.6%, with the experimentally obtained efciency being not higher than 28%. The structure was coated with an antireection coating. If there is a thin intermediate Au lm (mirror) between the silicon and silica (SiO2) layers, the resulting efciency increases to 72% [5]. In [5] such a grating was fabricated in a wide planar Si waveguide. The experimental coupling efciency of the device was found to be 70%, which agrees well with the calculation. However, coupling light into a wide waveguide (of width 10 m or about 4 m, when using a focusing lens) is only part of the problem. Another requirement is that the modes of the wide waveguide mode and the narrow waveguide need to be matched. This can be done using either planar tapers (tapered waveguides) [6] or planar photonic crystal (PhC) lenses [710]. A shortcoming of the tapered waveguides lies with their comparatively large length ranging from 30 to 130 m. Let us discuss the use of the PhC lenses in more detail. In [7], a two-dimensional (2D) FDTD method was employed to model a PhC lens for a wavelength = 1.55 m, manufactured on silicon and made up of N M = 25 8 holes of period a = /3.6 = 0.28,
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n1 Waveguide

n2

n1

n2

n1

n2

n1

Mikaelians lens n1 W1 Light source W1 W1

d2

W2

W2

W2

d1 X h

Fig. 1. A two-dimensional arrangement to couple the TM-wave (Ey 0) into a Si waveguide with the aid of a surface binary subwavelength diffraction grating.

with the hole radii increasing from the lens axis (r = 0.27a) to the periphery (r = 0.39a). It was shown that at the focal length 28.6a for a lens of thickness 9a illuminated by a Gaussian beam of waist diameter 25a, the diameter of the focal spot at half maximum was FWHM = 0.54. The modeling also showed that by putting in the focus a planar waveguide of width 2a the coupling efciency could be increased to 60%. Similarly to [7], modeling a 2D PhC lens was the concern in [8]. The lens was fabricated in Si (n = 3.46) and made up of periodic holes (of period a) of radius r(x) ranging from 0.25a to 0.40a. A specic feature of the lens was that the hole radii increased from the axis to the periphery by the law r(x) ~ x1.4. It is at this radius variation pattern that the minimal focal spot of FWHM = 1.27 occurred. The lens was illuminated by a Gaussian beam of diameter 26a, the focal length was 10a, with the hole arrays period being a = 0.26. Besides, in [8] the chromatic aberration of the PhC lens was demonstrated to coincide in sign with that of the diffraction grating: with increasing frequency of light, the focal length was found to increase. In [7, 8] the simulation was conducted for the TE-polarization of light (the electric vector E was in the PhC lens plane). In [9, 10], the study was dealing with a PhC Mikaelian [11, 12] lens, which is dissimilar from the conventional PhC lens of [7, 8] by focusing light near its surface. Thus, rst, using the Mikaelian lens it becomes possible to form a diffraction-free focal beam of diameter less than the diffraction limit (because the focal spot is formed by the surface waves) and, second, for the matching purposes, the narrow waveguide can be placed close to the lens. In this work, we discuss the results of the 3D modeling of a complete coupling device comprising both a diffraction grating to couple the focused Gaussian beam into a planar wide waveguide and a Mikaelian lens to perform mode-matching between the wide and narrow waveguides. By modeling in the Fullwave, we show that the efciency of such a nanophotonics device amounts to 32%, with the Gaussian beam crosssection (3 4.6 m) undergoing a 125-fold compression to match the narrow-ber mode cross-section (0.22 0.5 m). If a segment of the plane wave is incident on the diffraction grating, the efciency increases
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THREE-DIMENSIONAL SIMULATION OF A NANOPHOTONICS DEVICE , % 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0.3 0.5 1.0 1.5 W1, m

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Fig. 2. The efciency of coupling into a 2D waveguide as a function of thickness W1 of Si layer in the substrate.

to 52%. It is noteworthy that the efciency of the grating-aided coupling of the Gaussian beam into the narrow planar waveguide is 62.5%, whereas the efciency of coupling between the wide (4.6 m) and narrow (0.5 m) waveguides with the use of PhC Mikaelian lens is 46%. For a plane wave, these parameters, respectively, increase to 78 and 67%. 2. TWO-DIMENSIONAL SIMULATION OF THE GRATING-AIDED COUPLING OF LIGHT INTO A PLANAR WAVEGUIDE Figure 1 depicts a 2D arrangement to couple light into a thin planar waveguide with the aid of a binary grating fabricated on a thin substrate, the groove width being equal to the step width. Note that the grating grooves and the substrate are assumed to be innite along the Y-axis. The substrate has a sandwich-like structure (three periods of Bragg mirror), which aims to increase the coupling efciency. The parameters of the structure in Fig. 1 were tted in a quasi-optimal manner by search. The materials were chosen in compliance with the widely used silicon-on-insulator technology. The Si waveguide of thickness h = 220 nm and n1 = 3.479 for the wavelength = 1.57 m was fabricated on a silica layer (SiO2) of thickness W1 = 1.03 m and n2 = 1.44. Deeper in the substrate was another Si layer of thickness W2 = 0.55 m. The aforesaid two-layer pattern (silicon + silica) of total thickness W1 + W2 was reproduced in the substrate two more times. Adding a fourth period to the above Bragg mirror did not result in the further increase of the coupling efciency. The Si lm had a surface subwavelength binary diffraction grating with period T = 750 nm, the groove depth being D = 90 nm. The operating length of the grating was 78 periods. The illuminating cylindrical Gaussian beam with TE-polarization (with the electromagnetic eld being parallel to the gratings grooves and to the Y-axis, at TM-polarization the light almost does not enter into waveguide). The Gaussian beam radius on the Z-axis was b = 3 m. The Gaussian beam waist was found at a distance d1 = 2.78 m (on the X-axis) from the grating and at a distance d2 = 4.15 m (on the Z-axis) from the grating edge. The angle of light incidence on the grating was = 34. The modeling was conducted using the FullWAVE 6.0 software (RSoft, USA), which implements the FDTD-method for solving Maxwells equations. In the case under study, with the parameters given above, the efciency of the grating-aided coupling of light into the waveguide was = 66.3%. By the efciency is meant the ratio of power (or the total intensity) of the waveguide mode to the Gaussian beam power, multiplied by 100%. Figure 2 shows the efciency as a function of the silica thickness W1 in the substrates Bragg mirror in Fig. 1. Figure 2 suggests that, as is the case in Bragg mirror or in 1D photonic crystal, there are (narrow) resonance reectance peaks at W1 = 0.47, 1.03, and 1.6 m. The maximal intensity is achieved at W1 = 1.03 m. Figure 3 shows the result of simulated coupling of light into a 2D waveguide, where |Ey(x, z)|2 is the instantaneous pattern of the electric eld intensity. It can be seen from Fig. 3 that the Gaussian beam is decaying as it travels through the substrate, so that practically no light is penetrating beyond three periods of Bragg mirror. The Bragg mirror operates as an antireection coating and thus the Gaussian beam almost does not reect from the grating, being effectively coupled into the Si lm.
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16 14 12 10 8 6 3 1 1 3 5 x, m

Fig. 3. Instantaneous intensity distribution |Ey(x, z)|2.

, % 65 60 55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 2

8 h2, m

Fig. 4. The efciency of coupling into a 3D waveguide as a function of waveguide thickness h2 in the third dimension along the Y-axis.

Figure 4 shows the 3D efciency of coupling the focused Gaussian beam into a waveguide as a function of waveguide thickness h2 (Fig. 1) along the Y-axis. Figure 4 suggests that when the waveguide+grating thickness is h2 = 4.6 m, the coupling efciency is = 60%, whereas at h2 = 8 m the 3D efciency of = 65% is somewhat less than the 2D efciency of = 66.3%. We were unable to model the device performance for still larger values of thickness h2 (Fig. 1) due to limited computational possibilities available. Thus, the 3D FullWAVE modeling has shown that 60 percent of the light energy of the Gaussian beam (of 3 4.6 m waist) focused onto the grating can be coupled into a 4.6 m-thick planar Si waveguide of Fig. 1. 3. THREE-DIMENSIONAL MODELING OF A PHOTONIC CRYSTAL MIKAELIAN LENS TO COUPLE TWO WAVEGUIDES In [10] modeling a 2D PhC Mikaelian lens to couple two planar Si waveguides of thickness 5 and 0.5 m was reported. The coupling efciency was found to be = 45%. In this section, we discuss the results of 3D modeling of a similar nanophotonics device.
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z
Fig. 5. 3D scheme of two planar waveguides coupled with a PhC lens fabricated in the silica substrate.

Figure 5 shows two planar waveguides coupled with the use of a PhC lens. The input waveguide has a width of 4.6 m, the output waveguides width is 0.5 m, the Si lm has thickness 220 nm, the refractive index is n = 3.47 for the wavelength = 1.55 m, the array consists of 12 17 holes, with the hole diameter varying from 186 nm on the lens axis to 240 nm on the periphery and the period being 250 nm. The substrate of silica has the refractive index n = 1.44 and thickness 1 m. In modeling, we assumed that the TE-component of the elliptic Gaussian laser beam (the electric vector E is in the PhC lens plane) was fed to the wide waveguides input. The beams radii along the X- and Y-axes were, respectively, 4.6 and 0.22 m. The complete 3D domain of computation in the FullWAVE was X Y Z = 6 3.1 9 m3. The calculation was performed on Intel Celeron (3.06 GHz, RAM 512 Mb) and it took about 18 minutes to calculate the electromagnetic eld components for the nanophotonics device of Fig. 5. The coupling efciency for the two waveguides of Fig. 5 was found to be = 46%, being nearly the same as in the 2D case [10]. Note that both in this work and in [10] the Fresnel reection was disregarded. If the Gaussian beam is replaced with a 4.6 0.22 m2 segment of the plane wave incident on the input ber end, the coupling efciency, without regard for the Fresnel reection from the bers end, increases to 67%. Figure 6 shows the simulated performance of the nanophotonics device of Fig. 5 upon incidence of a Gaussian beam of waist 4.6 0.22 m2 on the wide waveguide. The instantaneous intensity distribution |Ex(x, y, z)|2 of Fig. 6 suggests that light is propagated in the waveguide, with only a minor portion of light energy going outside (into the substrate). The larger portion of the lost energy is reected from the PhC interface coming back into the wide waveguide. The simulation has also shown that the light loss to the substrate in the narrow waveguide is larger than in the wide waveguide. 4. THREE-DIMENSIONAL MODELING OF A COMPLETE NANOPHOTONICS DEVICE Shown in Fig. 7 is a scheme of a complete nanophotonics device that comprises a grating, a PhC Mikaelian lens, and two waveguides to be coupled. The substrate made up of silicon and silica has three periods of Bragg mirror coated with a thin (220 nm) silicon lm that has width h2 = 4.6 m in the region of the surface grating, PhC lens, and wide waveguide, and width s = 0.5 m in the output narrow waveguide region. The entire device has a length of 17 m. For the PhC lens, l1 = 3 m, the waveguide length between the grating and the lens is l = 4 m (with this value having no signicant effect on the efciency, it can be varied). Incident on the device of Fig. 7 in the grating region at an angle 34 is an elliptic linearly polarized Gaussian beam (the only electric vector component being Ex) of waist size 3 4.6 m2 (in which cases the efciency is maximal). Figure 8 shows the instantaneous intensity distribution of the electric eld |Ex(x, y, z)|2 in (a) the ZY-plane and (b) the ZX-plane. It is seen from Fig. 8 that light passes into the substrate under the grating, with almost no light energy being scattered into the substrate under the waveguide and under the lens. The efciency of coupling light
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0 (b)

2 x, m

8 6 4 2 0 3 2 1 0 y, m

Fig. 6. Instantaneous intensity distribution |Ex(x, y, z)|2 in (a) the ZX-plane and (b) the ZY-plane. The vertical line marks the substrate boundary.

Monitor 1 Monitor 2

Light source

h2 S lm

l X

Fig. 7. The complete photonics device arrangement comprising a grating, a wide waveguide, a PhC lens, a narrow waveguide, and a Bragg mirror substrate. OPTICAL MEMORY AND NEURAL NETWORKS (INFORMATION OPTICS) Vol. 18 No. 2 2009

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Fig. 8. The instantaneous intensity distribution of the electric eld |Ex(x, y, z)|2 for the entire device: (a) in the ZY-plane and (b) in the ZX-plane.

into the waveguide with the use of the grating that was calculated in the wide waveguide behind the grating was found to be 1 = 62.5% of the total power of the beam, with due regard for Fresnel scattering from the grating. The ultimate efciency of the entire device, derived at the narrow waveguide output, was 2 = 32%. If the device in Fig. 7 is illuminated by a 3 4.6 m2 segment of the plane linearly polarized wave the respective efciencies will increase to 1 = 78% and 2 = 52%. Note, for comparison, that if the same Gaussian beam is directly focused onto the end of the wide waveguide of the device in Fig. 5 (without a grating), the coupling efciency will be as low as = 8%. 5. CONCLUSIONS Summing up, using FullWAVE, we have conducted the rigorous 3D modeling of a new nanophotonics device. The device comprising a subwavelength diffraction grating of period 750 nm, wide (4.6 m) and narrow (0.5 m) planar waveguides coupled with a PhC Mikaelian lens of size 3 4.6 m, a 12 17 hole array of period 250 nm was synthesized on a Si lm of thickness 220 nm coated on a substrate comprising three periods of Bragg mirror (silicon and silica layers, of period 1.58 m). The modeling has shown that when an elliptic Gaussian beam of TE-polarization and waist 3 4.6 m2 and wavelength 1.55 m is incident on the grating at an angle 34 the coupling efciency of the device is 32%, which is 4 times greater compared to the grating-unaided focusing of the same Gaussian beam onto the end of the wide waveguide. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The work was nancially supported by the Russian-American program Basic Research and Higher Education (CRDF grant no. PG08-014-1), RF Presidential grant for support of the leading scientic schools (NSh-3086.2008.9), and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research grant 08-07-99007. REFERENCES
1. Bogaerts, W., Nanophotonic Waveguides and Photonic Crystal in Silicon-on-Insulator, PhD Thesis, Netherlands: Universitet ot Gent, 2003.
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2009