Polymer lattices as mechanically tunable 3-dimensional photonic crystals operating in the infrared
Abstract
Broadly tunable photonic crystals in the near- to mid-infrared region could find use in spectroscopy, non-invasive medical diagnosis, chemical and biological sensing, and military applications, but so far have not been widely realized. We report the fabrication and characterization of three-dimensional tunable photonic crystals composed of polymer nanolattices with an octahedron unit-cell geometry. These photonic crystals exhibit a strong peak in reflection in the mid-infrared that shifts substantially and reversibly with application of compressive uniaxial strain. A strain of ∼40% results in a 2.2 μm wavelength shift in the pseudo-stop band, from 7.3 μm for the as-fabricated nanolattice to 5.1 μm when strained. We found a linear relationship between the overall compressive strain in the photonic crystal and the resulting stopband shift, with a ∼50 nm blueshift in the reflection peak position per percent increase in strain. These results suggest that architected nanolattices can serve as efficient three-dimensional mechanically tunable photonic crystals, providing a foundation for new opto-mechanical components and devices across infrared and possibly visible frequencies.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Sep 07, 2015
- Source ID
- 10.1063/1.4930819
Entities
People
- H. Alaeian
- J. A. Dionne
- Julia R. Greer
- V. F. Chernow
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- California Institute of Technology
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- National Science Foundation
- Stanford University