All-optical logic gates based on two-dimensional low-refractive-index nonlinear photonic crystal slabs

Abstract

This article demonstrates theoretical design of ultracompact all-optical AND, NAND, OR, and NOR gates with two-dimensional nonlinear photonic crystal slabs. Compound Ag-polymer film with a low refractive index and large third-order nonlinearity is adopted as our nonlinear material and photonic crystal cavities with a relatively high quality factor of about 2000 is designed on this polymer slab. Numerical simulations show that all-optical logic gates with low pump-power in the order of tens of MW/cm2 can be achieved. These design results may provide very useful schemes and approaches for the realization of all-optical logic gates with low-cost, low-pump-power, high-contrast and ultrafast response-time.

Fabrication of air-bridged Kerr nonlinear polymer photonic crystal slab structures in near-infrared region

“…However, the small refractive index contrast between the polymer slab and silica substrate is unsuitable for high-Q microcavities because it largely limits the potential application of highly nonlinear polymer materials. We recently proposed an all-optical logic gates scheme based on 2D air-bridged high-Q polymeric PC microcavities [15] . Thus, an appropriate fabrication method for air-bridged polymeric PC slab structures, especially in the nearinfrared region should be explored.…”

“…The thickness of the PS layer was controlled by adjusting the rotation time and speed. To obtain good optical confinement in the vertical direction and maintain a single-mode, the PS slab thickness was fixed at 1 to 1.5a, where a represents the lattice constant of the PC pattern [15] . The thickness of the PS slab was controlled in the range of 500 to 800 nm by setting the photonic band gap (PBG) in the near-infrared region.…”

Ultracompact all-optical logic gates based on nonlinear plasmonic nanocavities

“…However, the large size of the bulk ferromagnetic and lithium niobate crystals, of the order of several millimeters, is unsuitable for practical chip-integrated applications [10,11]. Various schemes have been proposed to demonstrate all-optical basic logic gates based on linear interference mechanisms (or thirdorder nonlinear optical effects) in photonic microstructures and plasmonic nanostructures, such as photonic crystals [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23], microring resonators [24][25][26][27][28][29][30], nanobridges [31], graphene-oxide films [32,33], photonic and plasmonic nanowires [34][35][36], metamaterials [37][38][39], and semiconductor optical amplifiers [40,41]. The extremely high requirements placed on the light paths for the linear interference mechanism and relatively small third-order nonlinear susceptibility of conventional materials result in a low output logic state contrast of <10 dB and high signal intensities of several GW/cm 2 for basic all-optical logic gates.…”

High contrast all-optical logic gates based on 2D nonlinear photonic crystal

“…Also nonlinear photonic crystal devices based on Kerr effect have been proposed and studied so far. All optical photonic crystal logic gates based on nonlinear ring resonator, nonlinear photonic crystal slab and multi-mode interference waveguide have been investigated [6][7][8].…”