Novel materials and technologies for hybrid organic-inorganic photonic crystal devices

Photonic crystals (PC) are very promising systems by virtue of to their possibility to tailor the propagation of light and to control the spontaneous and stimulated emission of light emitting devices. PC technology will make possible applications such as compact filters, sharply bent waveguides or highly efficient light emitting devices. The fabrication of these devices can be possible if enough dielectric contrast is achieved in the spectral region of interest. Among the available materials for photonic applications, organic compounds, both small molecules and polymers, have attracted in the last few years an increasing interest, due to their low cost, easy functionalization and possibility to finely tune their optical and electrical properties. In spite of their strong potential, these organic materials typically show a low refractive index contrast, which makes it difficult a complete photonic band gap to be obtained. Furthermore, most organic material cannot be exposed to high-energy electrons during e-beam lithography, or cannot be processed by standard lithographic wet solutions. We present an overview of the materials and nanotechnological processes necessary for the fabrication of 1D and 2D hybrid organic/inorganic photonic crystals devices. Passive and active devices with different device geometries as well as novel fabrication approaches will be presented and discussed.