Deep Subwavelength Anti-Slot Photonic Crystals Fabricated in Monolithic Silicon Photonics Technology

We report the scalable fabrication and characterization of photonic crystal (PhC) nanobeam waveguides incorporating subwavelength-scale dielectric anti-slot unit cells. These anti-slot PhCs were fabricated using deep UV lithography on a monolithic silicon photonics technology. The dielectric band edge mode is characterized by strong field localization in the anti-slot region where the minimum dielectric feature size is approximately 70 nm. This demonstration opens the door to further investigation of subwavelength engineered photonic structures fabricated using commercial foundry processes for integrated photonics applications that benefit from enhanced light-matter interaction.