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Bloch wave – MoM is a first principles technique for determining the photonic band structure of triply-periodic electromagnetic media such as photonic crystals. It is based on the 3-dimensional spectral domain method, specialized to triply-periodic media. This technique uses the method of moments (MoM) in combination with a Bloch wave expansion of the electromagnetic field to yield a matrix eigenvalue equation for the propagation bands. The eigenvalue is the frequency (for a given propagation constant) and the eigenvector is the set of current amplitudes on the surface of the scatterers. Bloch wave - MoM is similar in principle to the plane wave expansion method, but since it additionally employs the method of moments to produce a surface integral equation, it is significantly more efficient both in terms of the number of unknowns and the number of plane waves needed for good convergence. Bloch wave - MoM is the extension to 3 dimensions of the spectral domain MoM method commonly used for analyzing 2D periodic structures such as frequency selective surfaces (FSS). In both cases, the field is expanded as a set of eigenfunction modes (either a Bloch wave in 3D or a discrete plane wave - aka Floquet mode - spectrum in 2D), and an integral equation is enforced on the surface of the scatterers in each unit cell. In the FSS case, the unit cell is 2-dimensional and in the photonic crystal case, the unit cell is 3-dimensional.