Three-dimensional nanofabrication of photonic crystals and polarization splitters and rotators

One of the most critical challenges in nanoscale science and engineering is to make functional 3D nanodevices with high-accuracy. While considerable progress has been made in the "bottom-up" approach, the lithographic "top-down" approach remains the only way to encode human engineering effort, and to meet the optimal theoretical designs. Probably the most prominent example of lithographic fabrication is semiconductor manufacturing. However such manufacturing, aside from being extremely expensive, is highly inflexible, virtually excluding any work other than silicon microelectronic devices. Meanwhile, the miniaturization and integration of optical devices can potentially revolutionize the field of optics, with an impact that may prove comparable to the transition of electronics from vacuum tubes to transistors. To achieve high-level functionalities and to meet the stringent tolerance in optical information processing, multilayered structures with both minimum feature sizes and layer-to-layer overlay accuracy down to a few of nanometers are required, thus posing significant challenges in fabrication. Some requirements, such as nanometer-level spatial coherence, are beyond the capability of current semiconductor manufacturing.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Qi, Minghao, 1973-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Henry I. Smith.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33923
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33923

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33923