Realization of 3D reflectors by using metal-air and semiconductor-air based photonic structures at three communication windows

This study is based on analysis of 3D photonic crystal structure (PCS) for realization of photonic reflector pertaining to suitable optical communication wavelengths of 850, 1310 and 1550 nm. The said photonic reflector application is envisaged separately by two 3D PCSs, which comprise semiconductor (germanium) and metal (iron) based circular rods respectively, arranged on a square lattice having air as the background material. The plane wave expansion (PWE) technique is employed to investigate the photonic band gap (PBG) vis-à-vis all the aforementioned wavelengths. PBG is meticulously controlled by suitably selected various structure parameters, such as lattice spacing, diameter of the circular rods and nature of their material. Simulation outcomes explored that semiconductor based PCS reflects wavelengths of 850, 1310 and 1550 nm, when selecting the diameter of the circular rods as 282, 608 and 771 nm, respectively, whereas metal based PCS reflects the aforementioned wavelengths for diameters of the circular rods close to 335, 1070 and 871 nm, respectively. Further, we assayed the variation in reflected wavelength with respect to different diameters of circular rods for both proposed structures. Thus, the proposed optical reflectors can find a wide range of applications vis-à-vis three communication windows.