Tailoring the optical properties of one-dimensional (1D) photonic structures

We present the possibility to tailor the optical properties of 1D photonic structures by using more than two materials and by clustering the high refractive index (hRI) layer in the structures. In particular, we show that: i) with a photonic crystal made of i different materials, the photonic band gap splits in i-1 bands; ii) with a proper choice of the layer thickness, disordered photonic structures made with a high number of layers show periodic transmission peaks; iii) when the size of the hRI layer clusters, randomly distributed within the low refractive index layers, follows a power law distribution, the total light transmission follows a sigmoidal function. Furthermore, we discuss the fabrication aspects to realize the above mentioned photonic structures.