Ultrafast all-optical switching in one-dimensional semiconductor–polymer hybrid nonlinear photonic crystals with relaxing Kerr nonlinearity

Abstract

The achievement of ultrafast all-optical switching on chip is a fundamental issue of all-optical integration. A feasible and promising method for this is to combine semiconductor photonic crystals with highly nonlinear polymer materials to form the hybrid nonlinear photonic crystal. In this paper we numerically investigate the femtosecond dynamic response of all-optical switching based on the effect of band gap edge shift in one-dimensional (1D) semiconductor–polymer hybrid nonlinear photonic crystal (NPC) structures. Taking into account the Kerr relaxation time of the polymer and semiconductor materials simultaneously, the introduction of highly nonlinear polymer materials with femtosecond relaxation time can realize all-optical switching in the femtosecond range in spite of the low response speed of the semiconductor materials. The physical origin is the large and ultrafast response Kerr nonlinearity of the polymer materials and this is proved by examining the dependence of switching time on the relaxation speed of the polymer materials. The results can be extended to 2D and 3D NPC structures.

Dual-arm Z-scan technique to extract dilute solute nonlinearities from solution measurements

“…The rapid development of applications for photonic switching has led to aggressive efforts to find materials with large optical nonlinearities [1][2][3]. To this end, many different types of materials have been extensively studied [4][5][6][7][8], with organic materials having been identified as being particularly promising due to their ease of processing and large nonlinear figures of merit [9][10][11][12][13]. Here we are primarily interested in Kerr-like nonlinear refraction, where the irradiance-dependent refractive index is given by n(I) = n 0 + n 2 I where n 0 and n 2 are the linear and nonlinear refractive indices, respectively, and I is the irradiance.…”

VO2-like thermo-optical switching effect in one-dimensional nonlinear defective photonic crystals

“…Finally, we should point out that the switching and tuning speed of this 1DPC-based bistable device is mainly determined by the thermo-optical response time of the temperature-sensitive materials (silica and silicon) and the optical response time of the Kerr medium (polystyrene), which is at microsecond 18 and sub-picosecond 14,19 scales, respectively. The method can guarantee the high operation speed of this device.…”

Disorder-induced light trapping enhanced by pulse collisions in one-dimensional nonlinear photonic crystals

“…Construction of such photonic crystals seems to be quite feasible for modern technology. Though we do not mean any specific materials, linear layers may be formed by glass, while for nonlinear layers one can use polymer materials possessing high nonlinearity and fast relaxation [30]. However, as far as we know, such photonic crystals possessing relaxing nonlinearity and disorder simultaneously were not realized experimentally yet.…”