Implementing of inverse designed power splitters by using effective medium theory

Arbitrary topology designs cause manufacturing challenges due to feature sizes that are difficult to perform with current industry-standard optical lithography. To overcome this problem, we employed generalized Bruggeman effective medium theory (EMT) to binarize a continuous index arbitrary topology designed by the objective first algorithm. Different types of power splitters such as 1x2, 1x4 are generated by the inverse design algorithm and then binarized by the proposed EMT approach. The designed final structures are compact with a binary index variation that achieve up to 95% efficiency over a broad bandwidth. The presented approach provides a different perspective of view to binarize an arbitrary topology generated by the objective first algorithm. Binarization of other computationally designed photonic structures is also feasible and the proposed method helps the fabrication process by resolving the difficulties emerging from the unattainable feature sizes.