Design and optimization of nano-optical elements by coupling fabrication to optical behavior

Photonic crystals and nanophotonics have received a great deal of attention over the last decade, largely due to improved numerical modeling and advances in fabrication technologies. To this day, fabrication and optical behavior remain decoupled during the design phase and numerous assumptions are made about "perfect" geometry. As research moves from theory to real devices, predicting device behavior based on realistic geometry becomes critical. In this dissertation, a set of numerical tools was developed to model micro and nano fabrication processes. They were combined with equally capable tools to model optical performance of the simulated structures. Using these tools, it was predicted and demonstrated that 3D nanostructures may be formed on a standard mask aligner. A space-variant photonic crystal filter was designed and optimized based on a simple fabrication method of etching holes through hetero-structured substrates. It was found that hole taper limited their optical performance and a method was developed to compensate. A method was developed to tune the spectral response of guided-mode resonance filters at the time of fabrication using models of etching and deposition. Autocloning was modeled and shown that it could be used to form extremely high aspect ratio structures to improve performance of form-birefringent devices. Finally, the numerical tools were applied to metallic photonic crystal devices.