Milling of polymeric photonic crystals by focused ion beam

The achievement of low cost photonic crystals in organic materials is not a trivial challenge even by top–down processes. Firstly the required conditions for the opening of a 2D Photonic Band Gap (PBG) in polymers by implementation of adapted software are shortly presented. The Focused Ion Beam (FIB) technique appears as a suitable process to carry out the patterning of the required sub-micronic dimensions. Then, the optimum experimental procedures leading to the fabrication of 2D photonic crystals in PMMA and CR39 are mainly exposed and discussed.