Increasing the Quality Factor (Q) of 1D Photonic Crystal Cavity with an End Loop-Mirror

Increasing the quality factor (Q-factor) of an optical resonator device has been a research focus utilized in various applications. Higher Q-factor means light is confined in a longer time which will produce a sharper peak and higher transmission. In this paper, we introduce a novel technique to further increase the Q-factor of a one-dimensional photonic crystal (1D PhC) cavity device by using an end loop-mirror (ELM). The technique utilizes and recycles the transmitted light from the conventional 1D PhC cavity design. The design has been proven to work by using the 2.5D FDTD simulation with Lumerical FDTD and MODE software. By using the ELM technique, the Q-factor of a 1D PhC design has been shown to increase up to 79.53% from the initial Q value without the ELM. The experimental result shows that the device is measurable by adding a Y-branch component to the one-port structure and able to get a high Q result. This novel design technique can be combined with any high Q-factor and very high Q-factor designs to increase more Q-factor values of photonic crystal cavity devices or any other suitable optical resonator devices.