Nematic liquid crystals are infiltrated into InP-based planar photonic crystals. Optical measurements as a function of temperature and polarization are used to study the average director field configuration in the nanometer-size holes: a planar equilibrium state is found.

A procedure for the infiltration of planar photonic crystals ͑PhCs͒ with liquid crystals ͑LCs͒ is presented. InP-based PhCs are infiltrated with the nematic LC-K15 in a specially designed high-vacuum chamber. The infiltration technique is validated and systematically characterized by measuring the transmission through the infiltrated PhCs at different temperatures and for different polarizations. The reproducibility and reliability of our procedure are demonstrated and a high filling efficiency is obtained.

Recently there has been a growing amount of attention devoted to tuneable photonic crystals (PhCs) where the optical response of PhC structures can be dynamically modified. We will show how infiltrating planar PhCs with a synthetic organic material allows the trimming and tuning of their optical properties. The potential of PhC infiltration will be demonstrated for InP-based planar PhCs consisting of a hexagonal array of air holes (hole diameter = 200 -400 nm; air filling factor = 0.40-0.50) etched through a planar waveguide in which light emitters (i.e. quantum wells) were embedded to enable optical measurements. The PhC pores were infiltrated with LC-K15 (5CB) nematic liquid crystals (LCs) in a specifically designed vacuum chamber, thereby changing the refractive index contrast between the holes and the semiconductor (trimming). Moreover, the possibility of tuning the optical response of PhCs by an external perturbation (i.e. temperature) was demonstrated. The change of the PhC optical properties due to infiltration and temperature tuning was studied both experimentally and theoretically. Experimental measurements were compared to theoretical calculations in order to obtain information on the in-filling efficiency, the LC refractive index, and the molecule orientation inside the holes. In the first case, optical measurements were performed as a function of temperature, whilst the average LC director configuration was determined by comparing transmission spectra in the transverse electric and magnetic polarization directions.

The possibility of using surface-adsorbed monolayers on oxidized GaAs single crystals is investigated to explore liquid crystal (LC) wettability and alignment. A technological process is developed to chemically activate the GaAs surface with a view to perform the infiltration of tunable two-dimensional (2-D) photonic crystals with LC materials. We demonstrate a vapor growth method to fabricate self-organized monolayers of carboxylated derivatives on plasma-activated surfaces. Our monolayers strongly increase the wettability of liquid crystal surfaces and may be helpful in achieving the infiltration of 2-D GaAs photonic crystals. Two types of molecular families were studied in this work: benzoic acids and fatty acids. Para-substituted benzoic acids with a wide range of electrical dipoles allow adsorption to be followed by measuring the surface potential of the grafted substrates using the Kelvin probe technique. These model compounds yield important information on the grafting conditions and the stability of the layers. Surface-adsorbed fatty acids are well-known to produce hydrophobic surfaces. The water contact angles measured on modified GaAs surfaces are equivalent to the ones measured on classical alkanethiol layers on gold.

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