Frank Scheffold

We report on the fabrication and characterization of disordered hyperuni- form photonic materials in two and three dimensions. We first discuss the fabrication of polymer templates of network structures using direct laser writing (DLW) lithography. Next we demonstrate how these mesoscopic polymer networks can be converted into silicon materials by infiltration and double-inversion. The resulting hyperuniform photonic materials display a pronounced pseudo gap in the optical transmittance in the short-wave infrared. To obtain a deeper understanding of the physical parameters dictating the properties of disordered photonic materials we investigate band gaps, and we report Anderson localization in hyperuniform structures using numerical simulations of the density of states and optical transport. Our results show that, depending on the frequency of in- cident radiation, a disordered, but highly correlated, dielectric material can transition from photon diffusion to Anderson localization and to a bandgap. In two dimensions we can also identify a regime, near the gap, dominated by tunnelling between weakly coupled states.

1) N. Muller, J. Haberko, C. Marichy, and F. Scheffold, Silicon Hyper- uniform Disordered Photonic Materials with a Pronounced Gap in the Shortwave Infrared, Adv. Optical Mater. 2, 115?119 (2014)

2) Luis S. Froufe-Pérez, M. Engel, P. F. Damasceno, N. Muller, J. Haberko, S. C. Glotzer, and F. Scheffold, Role of short-range order and hyperuni- formity in the formation of band gaps in disordered photonic materials, Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 053902 (2016)

3) Luis S. Froufe-Pérez, M. Engel, J.J. S’aenz, F. Scheffold, Band gap formation and Anderson localization in disordered photonic materials with structural correlations, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114 (36), 05130 (2017)

4) J. Haberko,Luis S. Froufe-Pérez,and F. Scheffold, https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.02095