Fully confined photonic band gap and guided modes in a two-dimensional photonic crystal slab

Summary form only given. As an optical analog to electronic crystals, the photonic crystal (PC) promises a revolution in the photonic world similar to the electronic revolution created by the electronic band gap engineering in semiconductors. A two-dimensional PC has an advantage of being easier to fabricate at optical wavelength (/spl lambda/) compared with a 3D PC. However, the light leakage in the vertical direction has been the main problem for using 2D PC in opto-electronic applications. We solve this problem by combining a traditional 2D PC with strong vertical index guiding between the waveguide layer (GaAs) and the cladding layer (Al/sub x/O/sub y/).