Towards silicon all-optical nanophotonic circuitry

We report on the design of novel, highly efficient, photonic crystal (PC) devices capable of fulfilling various functionalities for a given topology. These novel devices have been obtained by means of an inverse design (ID) method. This new procedure implements both the limitations of a given PC manufacturing technique and the typical errors due to random imperfections in the PC manufacturing process. Therefore, the resulting designs operation is very robust against imperfections and close to optimality. A more advanced version of this technique also allows us to design highly efficient photonic integrated circuits (PIC) of practical relevance that look very promising in terms of packaging density, improved functionality, and cost effectiveness.