Slow Bloch mode confinement in 2D photonic crystals for surface operating devices

2D photonic crystal (2DPC) structures consisting in 2D silicon nanopillar arrays in silica are investigated. The main motivation of this work lies in that 2D rod arrays should be easily combined with refractive structures (e. g. micro-wire waveguides), unlike 2DPC consisting in hole lattices. Such an association is expected to lead to both new functionalities and larger scale integration. In this paper, we study the loss mechanism for non degenerated Bloch modes located at Gamma-point in a 2DPC slab constituted by a square lattice of silicon rods in silica. For such modes, we show that the quality factor is mainly governed by the lateral losses. To further inhibit the lateral losses, a photonic heterostructure is used. 3D FDTD calculations show that quality factors of 4000 are achieved. To reduce the vertical losses, the 2DPC heterostructure is associated with a vertical Bragg mirror, thus resulting in very high quality factors (>40000). (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.