Silicon-based honeycomb photonic crystal structures with complete photonic band gap at 1.5μm wavelength

Photonic crystal structures consisting of dielectric cylinders arranged in a honeycomb pattern were fabricated in silicon using electron-beam lithography and inductively-coupled plasma dry-etching. Lattice parameters of the fabricated structures (rod diameter $\sim 0.4\mu \mathrm{m}$ , distance between the centers of neighboring rods $\sim 0.85\mu \mathrm{m}$ , and rod height $\sim 5.2\mu \mathrm{m}$ ) allowed to achieve and confirm experimentally the complete photonic band gap in vicinity of the optical communications wavelengths around $1.5\mu \mathrm{m}$ .