Experimental and numerical investigations of Si-based photonic crystals with ordered Ge quantum dot emitters

In recent years quasi-two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystals, also known as photonic crystal slabs, have been the subject of extensive research. The present work is based on photonic crystals where a hexagonal 2D lattice of air holes is etched through a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) slab. Light is guided in the horizontal plane using photonic band-gap properties, and index guiding provides the optical confinement in the third dimension. This work discusses photonic crystal slabs with Ge quantum dots (QDs) as internal sources. Ge quantum dots have luminescence around 1500nm, which is well suited for optical fiber communication in a way that is fully compatible with standard silicon technology. QD emission can be controlled by epitaxial growth on a pre-patterned SOI substrate. In this way the position of the QDs is controlled, as well as their homogeneity and spectral emission range. During this thesis, photonic crystal fabrication techniques together with techniques for the alignment of the photonic crystal holes with the QDs positions were developed. The employed techniques involve electron beam lithography (EBL) and inductively-coupled-plasma reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE). Perfect ordering of the QDs position was achieved by employing these techniques for pit patterning and the subsequent growth of Ge dots using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). A second EBL step was then used for photonic crystal writing, which needed to be aligned with respect to the pit pattern with a precision of about ± 30nm.