Design and performance enhancement of an all-optical demultiplexer for optical computing applications employing photonic crystals

In this paper, a photonic crystal (PhC) based 1 x 2 demultiplexer is designed to work efficiently at 1550 nm, which is the operating wavelength of optical communication. In designing a 1 x 2 demultiplexer, the PhC structure employs Y-shaped square-lattice silicon rods with air as its basis in accordance with the principle of beam interfer-ence. This study presents a 15 x 15 rod-based PhC optimized structure with air as its background. Several distinct phase studies are carried out making use of a wide variety of lattice constant and refractive index values of PhCs. The design achieves enhanced performance in accordance with parameters such as having higher contrast ratio of 15.64 dB, high transmission efficiency of 77.92%, fast response time of 15.03 fs, and low insertion loss of 1.08 dB with optimal values for refractive index (RI), silicon rod radius, and lattice constant. The results of the simulation that used the finite-difference-time-domain technique illustrate the good performance of this structure, which exhibits a higher contrast ratio and bit rate, average transmitted power, and fewer power losses. (c) 2023 Optica Publishing Group