Silicon-on-insulator nanopillar-array optical sensor

Tao Xu; Michelle Xu; Ning Zhu; Priyadarshini Kumari; Lech Wosinski; Stewart Aitchison; Harry Ruda

doi:10.1117/12.874099

11 February 2011 Silicon-on-insulator nanopillar-array optical sensor

Tao Xu, Michelle Xu, Ning Zhu, Priyadarshini Kumari, Lech Wosinski, Stewart Aitchison, Harry Ruda

Proceedings Volume 7908, Nanoscale Imaging, Sensing, and Actuation for Biomedical Applications VIII; 79080O (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.874099
Event: SPIE BiOS, 2011, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Pillar-array based optical cavities have unique properties, e.g., having a large and connected low dielectric index space (normally air space), having a large percent of electric field energy in air and standing on a substrate. These properties make them well suitable to make ultra compact and highly sensitive label-free optical sensors to detect bio-/chemical reactions. We designed, fabricated, and measured a silicon-on-insulator pillar array microcavity that possesses a quality factor as high as 27,600. We studied its sensitivity for both bulk index change and surface index modification. As a bulk index sensor, for environmental refractive index change of 0.01, a resonance peak wavelength shift of 3.5 nm was measured. As a surface index sensor, the simulations show, for a coating with thickness of 1 nm, the resonance wavelength shifts as large as 2.86 nm. Combining with a sharp 0.06 nm wide resonance peak, our pillar-array sensor is able to resolve ultra small bulk and surface refractive index changes caused by target molecules.

Citation Download Citation

Tao Xu, Michelle Xu, Ning Zhu, Priyadarshini Kumari, Lech Wosinski, Stewart Aitchison, and Harry Ruda "Silicon-on-insulator nanopillar-array optical sensor", Proc. SPIE 7908, Nanoscale Imaging, Sensing, and Actuation for Biomedical Applications VIII, 79080O (11 February 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.874099

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KEYWORDS

Optical microcavities

Refractive index

Coating

Silicon

Sensors

Optical sensors

Finite-difference time-domain method

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