Photofabrication of wood-pile three-dimensional photonic crystals using four-beam laser interference

We present a method for fabricating three-dimensional photonic crystal structures by means of an interference pattern of laser beams. Two orthogonal square lattice rod-arrays which compose the wood-pile photonic crystal structure are fabricated by interference of four laser beams into photopolymerizable resin. The lattice constant of the photonic crystal can be selected freely by incident angles of laser beams without any deformations of the lattice symmetry and the lattice elements. The proposed method does not require complicated multiple processes compared with the layer-by-layer fabrication method, and thick wood-pile photonic crystals are immediately produced with high precision. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.