Engineered Porosity for Microphotonics and Plasmonics

Nanostructures with dimensions in the range of the wavelength of light have gained enormous interest in the past years. This has driven materials research and enabled the development of novel nanostructuring techniques. Applications include ultracompact devices based on total internal reflection (classical integrated optics) as well as on Bragg reflection (photonic crystals). Initially, only dielectric nanostructures had been considered, but more recently, metallic nanostructures as well as metallodielectric structures are predicted to have great potential in subwavelength optics. This book, first published in 2004, combines the areas of optical nanoparticles, microphotonics, photonic crystals and the emerging field of plasmonics and reviews advances in the understandings of porous silicon, the famous light-emitting silicon sponge which caused a real hype in the 90s and features first devices in the area of photonic crystals. An understanding of photonic crystal properties provides new insight in the classical area of ridge waveguides, and new designs are proposed. Finally, the emerging field of plasmonics is discussed.