This two-year award, which supports U.S.-Greece cooperative research on photonic band gap materials, involves Costas Soukoulis of Iowa State University and G. Kiriakidis of the University of Crete and the Research Center of Crete. The objective of their research is to develop new experimental and theoretical tools to understand the characteristics of photonic crystals, referencing Sub-THz and THz crystals, defects, novel materials, and fabrication at infrared wave scales.
The U. S. investigator brings to this collaboration expertise in a new dielectric structure that has full three-dimensional PBG that facilitates fabricating crystals with higher photonic band gap frequencies. This is complemented by the Greek investigator's strengths in fabricating photonic crystals using deep x-ray lithography. Each side provides complementary equipment for the proposed research. The research is expected to lead to understanding of how to design and build photonic crystals, which may be used in such applications as millimeter-wave antennas and thresholdless semiconductor lasers.
