Abstract

There is a great deal of current interest in the possibility of creating three-dimensional photonic band crystals in which no electromagnetic (EM) propagation is possible for certain frequencies.¹ Recently, Ho et al. have proposed a new photonic crystal based on stacked dielectric rods (Fig. 1), which can be fabricated at smaller scales by conventional methods.² Defects or cavities around the same geometry can also be built by addition of removal of rods from the crystals.³ The electrical fields in such cavities are usually enhanced, and by placing active devices in such cavities one can obtain novel properties. This effect has been used already in optoelectronics to achieve novel devices such as resonant-cavity-enhanced (RCE) photodetectors and light- emitting diodes.⁴ In this paper, we demonstrate the RCE effect by placing microwave detectors in a layer-by-layer photonic crystal.

© 1996 Optical Society of America