An Optimized Design of Optical Logic Gates for Photonic Integrated Circuits

The interest of today’s research community has turned towards optical domain due to the increased speed and zero electro-magnetic interference. Optical networks comprising of optical splitters, optical switches, circulators etc., are in need of ultra-fast switching capabilities. The usage of digital gates in signal processing has dragged down the performance of optical networks due to the requirement of electro-optic conversions. Therefore, by implementing logic gates working completely on optical mode will furtherance optical signal processing and optical computing techniques in photonic networks. This paper portrays the optimized design of basic, exclusive and universal optical-logic gates based on 2D-photonic crystals using InP material at an operating frequency of 1550 nm using OptiFDTD software. The shortcoming of photonic crystals is that it cannot support photons in Photonic Band Gap (PBG). Thus, by introducing suitable perforations like point and line defects, a better electric field distribution is achieved. Moreover, by creating different cavities which produce appropriate interference namely constructive and destructive interferences, subsequently yields a high contrast ratio which is preferred for future Photonic-Integrated Circuits (PICs).