Direct laser writing of three-dimensional photonic structures in Nd:yttrium aluminum garnet laser ceramics

We report on the direct laser writing of a three-dimensional photonic structure in a neodymium doped yttrium aluminum garnet laser ceramic. The fabricated structure consists of a voxel-based face centered cubic lattice showing a stop band centered at 2.4 mu m. Confocal luminescence imaging was used to study the submicron low refractive-index voxels constituting the photonic structure, as well as to elucidate how the luminescence properties of the neodymium laser ions are modified by the writing process.