Photonic Band Engineering In 1D Photonic Crystals

Conference Year

January 2020

Abstract

Achieving lasing in solid-state organic diodes has been a long-standing research priority since the first demonstrations of electroluminescence in organic devices in the 1980s. During this time, improvements to manufacturing and materials have made organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) commercially viable and have enabled their current use in smartphone screens and displays. Our work uses optical microcavity resonators to control the light emission from OLED devices, resulting in significant narrowing of the emission peak and control of the observed color and linewidth. In an exact analogy to the formation of electronic bands from solid-state theory, we demonstrate that coupling N multiple OLED resonators results in the splitting of the single emission peak into N multiple peaks. This hybrid multi-device structure therefore constitutes a 1-dimensional photonic crystal with a well-defined photonic energy band structure defined by the periodicity of the material layers. We show that this band structure can be manipulated by adjusting the mirror thickness to control the bandwidth and energy of the band center. We further demonstrate the formation of a photonic band gap through the introduction of a Peierls distortion to the photonic crystal lattice. By precise control of the photonic crystal structure, we seek to promote emission into a single mode and explore the possibility of reaching the lasing threshold within such photonic crystals.

Primary Faculty Mentor Name

Matthew White

Faculty/Staff Collaborators

Matthew White (Advisor)

Status

Graduate

Student College

Graduate College

Program/Major

Materials Science

Primary Research Category

Engineering & Physical Sciences

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Photonic Band Engineering In 1D Photonic Crystals

Achieving lasing in solid-state organic diodes has been a long-standing research priority since the first demonstrations of electroluminescence in organic devices in the 1980s. During this time, improvements to manufacturing and materials have made organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) commercially viable and have enabled their current use in smartphone screens and displays. Our work uses optical microcavity resonators to control the light emission from OLED devices, resulting in significant narrowing of the emission peak and control of the observed color and linewidth. In an exact analogy to the formation of electronic bands from solid-state theory, we demonstrate that coupling N multiple OLED resonators results in the splitting of the single emission peak into N multiple peaks. This hybrid multi-device structure therefore constitutes a 1-dimensional photonic crystal with a well-defined photonic energy band structure defined by the periodicity of the material layers. We show that this band structure can be manipulated by adjusting the mirror thickness to control the bandwidth and energy of the band center. We further demonstrate the formation of a photonic band gap through the introduction of a Peierls distortion to the photonic crystal lattice. By precise control of the photonic crystal structure, we seek to promote emission into a single mode and explore the possibility of reaching the lasing threshold within such photonic crystals.