Modeling of a wide band pass optical filter based on 1D ternary dielectric–metallic–dielectric photonic crystals

We suggest ternary structures of dielectric?metal?dielectric photonic structures to be used as optical band pass filters. We theoretically study and evaluate the optical properties of these one-dimensional structures. ZnSe/metal/LiF and SiC/metal/SiO2 with three metals, namely silver, gold and copper, are suggested as the optical filters. We calculated the reflectance and the transmittance of electromagnetic waves (EMW) out of these structures using the transfer matrix method. These calculations take place for the case of normal and oblique incidences using actual measured values for the indices of refraction. Our calculations show that such photonic crystal (PC) filters have a well shaped pass band in the visible range and block efficiently ultraviolet and infrared EMW. Our results show that PCs having silver as the metal layer are preferred to those having gold and copper because of the high transmittance in the visible range. A SiC/Ag/SiO2 filter shows better performance than a ZnSe/Ag/LiF one from the transmittance and the shape of the band points of view. Such a filter shows a well shaped wide band over the range of incident angles from 0? to 80?.