Three-Dimensional Material Tectonics for Electromagnetic Wave Control by Using Micoro-Stereolithography

Three-dimensional material tectonics is new strategy of science and engineering to create novel functional materials with special patterns and morphologies. In this investigation, alumina photonic crystals with a diamond structure were fabricated to control microwaves in terahertz frequency ranges. Three-dimensional dielectric lattices were designed by using graphical application of a CAD (Computer-aided Designing) software, and acrylic diamond structures with alumina particles dispersion were formed by using micro-stereolithography of a CAM (Computer-aided Manufacturing) system. Fabricated precursors were dewaxed and sintered in the air to obtained full ceramics photonic crystals. The microwave properties were measured by terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. A complete photonic band gap was observed at the frequency range from 0.40 to 0.47 THz, and showed good agreement with the simulated results by PWE (Plane Wave Expansion) method of an electromagnetic band calculation. Moreover, a localized mode was obtained in the introduced plane defect between twinned diamond structures. They corresponded to simulated results by TLM (Transmission Lime Modeling) method of an electromagnetic fields analysis.