Direct Analysis of Photonic Nanostructures: Anyone working with photonic crystals, or any photonic nanostructures for that matter, knows that fabricated structures never come out as well as the simulated design.  What's to blame?  Material losses? Fabrication inaccuracies? In this articles, we analyze the optical properties of photonic nanostructures.

We start with SEM images and import them into a Maxwell Equations simulator (Finite Difference Time Domain).  We show that this type of analysis  predicts the performance of fabricated devices.  In this way, it showed us where the problems came from and helped us make our design more fabrication friendly, which ultimately allowed us to improve our devices signficantly.  Full report below: 

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