Photon confinement effects - from physics to applications

We have fabricated systems with three - dimensional photon confinement. These structures are based on epitaxially grown heterostructures providing one dimension of photon confinement. In the plane photonic confinement effects are obtained by microfabrication techniques using electron beam lithography and dry etching. In the first part of the paper, photoluminescence (PL) studies on pillars with three dimensional optical confinement, called photonic dots, are presented. The PL spectra clearly show that the structures provide discrete, size controlled modes which can be tuned over a wide energy range by varying the dimensions of the pillars. By using angle resolved spectroscopy, we show that the dispersion along the plane of the epitaxial layers is suppressed in photonic dots. The second part of the paper addresses photonic confinement effects in two dimensional photonic crystal structures. By using the photonic crystals as mirrors in semiconductor lasers, basic properties of photonic crystals have been studied.