Influence of Fabrication Error on the Characteristics of a 2-D Photonic-Crystal Cavity

Statistical studies on the scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of two-dimensional photonic crystal (PhC) slab cavities show that fabrication errors in the size and position of etched air holes follow Gaussian distribution. The influences on the characteristics of PhC cavities are then investigated and compared with those caused by fabrication error with widely-accepted uniform distribution through finite-difference time domain (FDTD) simulation. As expected, Gaussian distribution in fabrication error has more significant impact on cavity characteristics than uniform distribution simply by their difference in the fourth moment.