Free-standing porous silicon single and multiple optical cavities

Porous silicon free-standing microcavity structures, with different layer designs, have been fabricated. Single microcavities show transmission resonances in the technologically relevant wavelength region of 1.55 mum with quality factors up to 3380. High-order cavities show sub-nm transmission peaks over the whole stop band. Coupled microcavity structures, where splitting of the degenerate cavity mode occurs, lead to multiple transmission peaks in a limited region of the stop band. We also report incident angle-dependent measurements, where transmission peak blueshift and splitting of transverse electric and transverse magnetic polarized modes due to porous silicon birefringence were observed. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.