Photonic crystals
Cristales fotónicos
- Date
- 1987 · confidence high
- Place
- Red Bank, New Jersey, United States
- Credited to
- Eli Yablonovitch and Sajeev John
- Field
- Communication
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A periodic refractive-index structure that creates forbidden bands for light, like a semiconductor for electrons. Two 1987 papers propose it independently.
Yablonovitch worked at Bell Communications Research and John at Princeton; Rayleigh (1887) had already described 1D periodic reflectors.
What it led to
- photonic-crystal fibres and new types of laser
- light guides in photonic circuits
- structural colour and sensors