Photonic Crystal Technology

4. Functionality

Optical functionality that cannot be achieved by conventional materials are possible because of phenomena that occur naturally in photonic crystals.
For instance, two such phenomena are negative refraction and anomalous dispersion. Such phenomena occur in the narrow region of the band edge, the wavelength range between the photonic band (transmission) and the photonic bandgap (reflection).
The technology of controlling the behaviour in such a boundary area is know as photonic band edge engineering.
Much photonic crystal research in recent years has focused on the fabrication of photonic crystal light pipes (waveguides). Low loss photonic crystal optical waveguides capable of guiding light through abrupt changes in direction with neglibile loss have been realized, and it is anticipated that the realization of optical circuits will be a revolutionary technology.

The main concern in such research was overcoming the difficulty of the process of manufacture. Until now, because of the extremely intensive processing technology required to fabricate photonic crystals of two or more dimensions, and despite the wide adoption of one dimensional multilayer optical films, higher dimentional photonic crystals have not been commercialized.
Our company has succeeded in the establishment of a mass production technology for photonic crystals. We have focused on establishing markets suited to the current level of technology rather than advancing our processing technology.
Our stragtegy is to promtly commercialize photonic crystals.