Implementation of photonic crystal based optical full adder using ring resonators

In this paper, the implementation of an all-optical full adder based on a two-dimensional photonic crystal is proposed. The proposed structure consists of hexagonal lattice of silicon rods embedded in air substrate. To design the proposed optical full adder, three nonlinear ring resonators, some linear waveguides, and some point defects are used. The switching mechanism of the ring resonators is based on nonlinear Kerr effect. The performance of the proposed structure has been analyzed and investigated by using plane wave expansion (PWE) and finite difference time domain (FDTD) methods. The minimum contrast ratio of the structure is 17.02 dB. The response time of the structure is 0.724 ps and can operate at a bit rate of 1.381 Tb/s. The proposed structure is simple, compact, and offers high contrast ratio, fast response time along with high bit rate and therefore can be a promising candidate for high speed data processing, computing, networking, and optical integrated circuits. •In this paper, we have proposed an all-optical full adder using a 2D hexagonal Si-air photonic crystal.•The proposed optical full adder has been designed by using three nonlinear ring resonators along with some linear waveguides.•The switching functionalities of the ring resonators have been achieved by utilizing nonlinear Kerr effect.•The proposed structure is simple, compact, offers high contrast ratio, fast response time and high bit rate respectively.