We present a procedure to enhance the transmission efficiency of a photonic crystal slab waveguide bend by introducing an air hole with the same radius at the center of bend and optimizing the positions of three neighboring holes in the corner. The improvement relies only on the method of displacing holes which is technologically preferred to controlling variations in hole size or shape. We employ the effective refractive index approach and two-dimensional plane wave expansion method to analyze the guide modes of the straight waveguide and waveguide bend. The transmission character of bent waveguides is investigated using two-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method. Numerical studies demonstrate that the approximate method of mode analysis is unsuitable to our model. Alternatively, we systematically study the effect of different positions of the holes on the transmission. The optimized bends for the high transmission with broad bandwidth are proposed.
Systematic design of photonic crystal structures using topology optimization: Low-loss waveguide bends