Sh. Fan et al., HIGH EXTRACTION EFFICIENCY OF SPONTANEOUS EMISSION FROM SLABS OF PHOTONIC CRYSTALS, Physical review letters, 78(17), 1997, pp. 3294-3297
A thin slab of two-dimensional photonic crystal is shown to alter dras
tically the radiation pattern of spontaneous emission. More specifical
ly, by eliminating all guided modes at the transition frequencies, spo
ntaneous emission can be coupled entirely to free space modes, resulti
ng in a greatly enhanced extraction efficiency. Such structures might
provide a solution to the long-standing problem of poor light extracti
on from high refractive-index semiconductors in light-emitting diodes.