CrystalWave planar photonic crystal circuit design software launches

Sept. 22, 2003
22 September 2003 Oxford UK Lightwave Europe -- Photon Design has just released a major new CAD product range - CrystalWave - to address the requirements of photonic crystal researchers for better CAD tools.

22 September 2003 Oxford UK Lightwave Europe -- Photon Design has just released a major new CAD product range - CrystalWave - to address the requirements of photonic crystal researchers for better CAD tools.

Photonic crystal circuits are currently of wide interest amongst research groups around the world, since they provide potentially substantial decreases in optical circuit size and ease of manufacturing.

CrystalWave has been designed from the ground up for this application and brings superior ease of use, accuracy and speed of simulation over any other product available commercially.

It includes an editor that is optimised for the layout of a photonic crystal lattice of holes, a mask file generator also optimised for this geometry, and a 2D and 3D FDTD simulation engine for computing the optical propagation in the structures.

The simulation engine too is optimised for photonic crystal structures and provides substantial improved speed, efficiency and accuracy over other general-purpose commercial FDTD codes.

CrystalWave is designed as a complete photonic crystal simulation environment and other simulation modules will follow in the near future.

The software has recently been used in conjunction with Photon Design's other simulation tools FIMMPROP and Kallistos, an automatic optimiser, to develop a Y-junction structure with world record breaking low out of plane scattering and a throughput power of over 75%.

The design rules that have been obtained from this study will form the basis of a major step forward in photonic crystal evolution. A full description is to be published at this week's ECOC conference and in the Journal of Lightwave Technology.

Photon Design
Photon Design was founded in 1992 and is based in Oxford, UK. It markets a wide range of passive and active photonics CAD and simulation tools including FIMMWAVE, FIMMPROP and CLADISS-2D, and is the World leader in the EME technique for simulating optical propagation.

CrystalWave features
- Lattice editor makes even the most complex lattice structures with thousands of holes easy to define
- Editor provides unparalleled ease of use and flexibility - with free rotation, multiple undo/redo, constraint system, arbitrary lattice parameters and hole shape to name just a few
- Export to GDS-II for mask generation � this export filter has been carefully designed to maximise efficiency of the GDS-II file by exploiting the repetition in a photonic crystal.
- Easy placement of point and line defects
- Script system to allow the user to programmatically construct even the most complex structures in an automated manner.
- 2D and 3D FDTD engine - optimised for lattice geometries, giving much improved speed and accuracy over general-purpose FDTD products.

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