Abstract

There has been increasing interest in two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystals that are much easier to fabricate than 3D photonic crystals¹ and have advantages in mode confinement over the one-dimensional DBR used in the current semiconductor micro-cavity lasers. Previous analyses of 2D photonic bands are mainly carried out for the waves propagating in xy-plane that is perpendicular to the dielectric or air rods (in-plane modes).^2-4 Although some characteristics of photonic band structures in non-zero-k_z planes (off-plane modes) have been discussed,⁴ there has been no detailed analysis on the off-plane-angle dependence of 2D photonic band gap. In this paper, we present the first analysis of the off-plane angular characteristics of 2D photonic band gap and investigate its relation to the total reflection.

© 1995 IEEE