Nanofabrication of high quality photonic crystals for integrated optics circuits

In this paper we report on the fabrication and characterization of two-dimensional photonic crystals. They are realized as a hexagonal array of air holes etched in GaAs or InP based slab waveguide heterostructures. The fabrication steps are discussed, with a focus on the development of suitable dry etching processes. Holes with a depth of 1 µm on GaAs and 4 µm on InP were fabricated, which results in a good overlap of the guided mode with the photonic crystal patterns and low losses. The optical quality of the structures is assessed by transmission spectroscopy of photonic crystal blocks and photonic crystal-based waveguides.