The development of micropillars and two-dimensional nanocavities that incorporate an organic semiconductor thin film

Photonic crystals (PC) are periodic optical structures containing low and high refractive index layers that influence the propagation of electromagnetic waves. Photonic cavities can be created by inserting defects into a photonic crystal. Such structures have received significant attention due to their potential of confining light inside volumes (V) smaller than a cubic wavelength of light (λ/n)3 which can be used to enhance light-matter interaction. Cavity quality factor (Q) is useful for many applications that depend on the control of spontaneous emission from an emitter such quantum optical communication and low-threshold lasing. High Q/V values can also result in an enhancement of the radiative rates of an emitter placed on the surface of the cavity by means of the Purcell effect. This thesis concerns the fabrication and study of two types of optical cavity containing an organic-semiconductor material. The cavities explored are; (1) one-dimensional micropillar microcavities based on multilayer films of dielectric and organic materials, and (2) two-dimensional nanocavities defined into a photonic crystal slab. Firstly, light emission from a series of optical micropillar microcavities containing a thin fluorescent, red-emitting conjugated polymer film is investigated. The photoluminescence emission from the cavities is characterized using a Fourier imaging technique and it is shown that emission is quantised into a mode-structure resulting from both vertical and lateral optical confinement within the pillar. We show that optical-confinement effects result in a blue-shift of the fundamental mode as the pillar-diameter is reduced, with a model applied to describe the energy and distribution of the confined optical modes. Secondly, simulation, design, and analysis of two dimensional photonic crystal L3 nanocavities photonic crystal are presented. Nanocavities were then prepared from silicon nitride (SiN) as the cavity medium with the luminescence emitted from an organic material at red wavelengths that was coated on the cavity surface. To improve the quality factor of such structures, hole size, lattice constant and hole shift are systematically varied with their effect as cavity properties determined. Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) modelling is used to support the experimental work and predict the optimum design for such photonic crystal nanocavity devices. It is found that by fine-tuning the nearest neighbour air-holes close to the cavity edges, the cavity Q factor can be increased. As a result, we have obtained a single cavity mode having a Q-factor 938 at a wavelength of 652 nm. Here, the cavity Q factor then increases to 1100 at a wavelength of 687 nm as a result of coating a red-emitting conjugated polymer film onto the top surface of the nanocavity. We propose that this layer planarizes the dielectric surface and helps reduce optical losses as a result of scattering.