Design of a Curved Shape Photonic Crystal Taper for Highly Efficient Mode Coupling

The design and modeling of a curved shape photonic crystal taper consisting of Si rods integrated with a photonic crystal waveguide are presented. The waveguide is composed of a hexagonal lattice of Si rods and optimized for CO2 sensing based on absorption spectroscopy. We investigated two different approaches to design a taper for a photonic crystal waveguide in a hexagonal lattice of silicon rods. For the first approach (type 1), the taper consists of a square lattice taper followed by a lattice composed of a smooth transition from a square to a hexagonal lattice. In the second approach (type 2), the taper consists of a distorted hexagonal lattice. Different shapes, such as convex, concave, and linear, for the curvature of the taper were considered and investigated. The structure of the taper was improved to enhance the coupling efficiency up to 96% at a short taper length of 25 lattice periods. The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) technique was used to study the transmission spectrum and the group index. The study proves the improvement of coupling using a curved shape taper. Controlling the group index along the taper could be further improved to enhance the coupling efficiency in a wider spectral range.