ABSTRACT
Abstract. Nanophotonics, i. e. the structuring of materials well below the micron range allows the control of light propagation and of spontaneous emission. We discuss fundamentals and properties in two areas, integrated optics and LEDs . In integrated optics, we have now at hand a number of building blocks that will allow the development of photonic crystal-based integrated optics solutions. One of the bottleneck was the propagation loss but progress in lithographic and etching technology has brought the observed values near intrinsic values, themselves in an acceptable range. In the LED field, total internal refraction severely limits the optical extraction efficiency. While various solutions are used for industrially mass produced LEDs based on geometrical optics (roughened surfaces, shaped angular sructures), one would like to have solutions which are amenable to full planar processing, and high brightness. We show that optimum microcavities could lead to extraction efficiencies in the 40% range. Most of the remaining light is emitted into guided modes. It could also be extracted by properly designed photonic crystals acting as omnidirectional light scatterers.
