A silicon micromachined photonic band gap cell, characteristics and an application

A novel PBG cell based on micromachining of silicon using wet anisotropic etching has been considered. Since this is based on etching of the silicon substrate, it is amenable to fabrication with standard silicon processes and integration with millimeter wave circuits. We characterize this kind of PBG cell by full wave simulations using a time domain code. For the purpose of characterization, the scenario of a 50 ohm microstrip line placed on a silicon substrate which is anisotropically etched to create patterns with sloping walls is considered. This is shown to produce the well known PBG response of stop bands in certain frequency bands. We look at the variation in the transmission coefficient (S₂₁) response as the number of periods, length based average fill factor and depth of micromachining are varied. One application of a low pass filter has been proposed and simulated results are given.