Effect of fabrication tolerances on the performance of two-dimensional polymer photonic crystal channel drop filters: a theoretical investigation based on the Finite Element Method

Guidelines for the design and fabrication of polymer photonic crystal channel drop filters for coarse wavelength division multiplexing are provided. A Fabry-Perot cavity consisting of a membrane-type slab photonic crystal, where a hole row perpendicular to the propagation direction is removed, is considered. We selected nanoimprinting as the manufacturing technique. The influence on the cavity performance of several key parameters, i.e., polymer core material, lattice geometry, defect length, and holes’ radius, has been investigated in a device compliant with the requirement of the ITU-T G.694.2 standard. A detailed analysis of the fabrication tolerances has been carried out at 1551 nm. The maximum acceptable drift of the geometrical parameters has been accurately evaluated by using the finite element method to prove that the fabrication tolerances do not significantly affect the performance of polymer filters for coarse wavelength division multiplexing, when manufactured by thermal nanoimprinting lithography.