Optical sensors represent a vitally important class of analytical tools that have been used to provide chemical information ranging from analyte concentration and binding kinetics to microscopic imaging and molecular structure. Optical sensors utilize a variety of signal transduction pathways based on photonic attributes that include absorbance, transmission, fluorescence intensity, refractive index, polarization, and reflectivity. Within the broad classification of optical sensors, refractive index (RI) sensors, which include devices such as surface plasmon resonance instruments, interferometers, diffraction gratings, optical fibers, photonic crystals, and resonant microcavities, have emerged as promising technologies over the past two decades. These optical sensors based on the change in RI associated with analyte binding involve an impressive array of instrumentation that allows for label-free1 molecular sensing without the added complexity of fluorescent or enzymatic tags. By removing the requirement for labels, RI-based sensing allows for real-time and direct detection of molecular interactions at a dielectric interface. Though many manifestations of RI-based sensors have been proposed and demonstrated, high-quality factor (high-Q) optical sensors based on multi-pass photonic microstructures have recently emerged as an extremely promising, and perhaps the most sensitive, class of label-free sensors. Major advantages of many high-Q sensors include multiple-pass interactions between the propagating electromagnetic radiation and the respective analyte binding event, as well as the intrinsic chip-integration and wafer-scale fabrication that accompany many semiconductor-based sensing modalities.

High-Q optical sensors involve microstructures that confine light due to differences in RI between a micropatterned material and its surrounding. This confinement supports multi-pass light interactions based on either multiple reflections or many circumnavigations. In both cases, this results in an increased effective optical path length that improves the sensitivity of the device. The Q factor of a given device is a measure of the resonant photon lifetime within a microstructure (higher Q factor = longer lifetime), and therefore Q is directly correlated to the number of times a photon is recirculated and allowed to interact with the analyte.2 Light is confined by either total internal reflection at a core/cladding interface (microcavities) or by the spatially periodic modulation of materials with different RI properties (photonic crystals), and resultant high-Q sensors interact with their local environments via an evanescent optical field that extends from the sensor surface and decays exponentially with distance.3, 4 A more detailed treatment of microcavity technology involving whispering gallery mode (WGM) sensing will be presented in the following section. High-Q optical sensors, whether based on guided-mode optics or photonic crystal (PC) structures, support resonances at very specific wavelengths, and these resonances are responsive to changes in the effective RI at the device surface. For most microcavity sensors, the wavelengths of light transmitted between an adjacent waveguide or optical fiber and the cavity is attenuated at narrow resonant wavelengths that are a function of the RI at the microcavity surface; for most PC sensors, light is back-reflected only at precise resonance wavelengths. As the Q factor of a device increases, the photon lifetime increases, and the resonance wavelength peak becomes narrower. For both microcavity and PC sensors, the relative shift in resonance wavelengths is directly proportional to the effective RI sampled by the confined optical mode, which samples the dielectric interface via the evanescent wave extending from the sensor surface. Since most analytes, such as organic (bio)molecules in water or gases in air, have a greater dielectric permittivity (and thus higher RI) than the surrounding medium, their binding or association with the sensor surface leads to an increase in effective RI sampled by the optical mode.4 Though factors such as biological and spectroscopic noise often set the practical limit of detection for any sensor system, the narrow resonance wavelengths associated with high-Q cavities provide an opportunity to resolve tiny spectral shifts that accompany a very small number of analyte binding interactions. The impressive sensitivity of microcavity and PC devices to minute changes in the effective RI at the sensor surface is the basis for most of the recent applications of high-Q optical sensors.

The development of high-Q photonic devices has been tremendously enabled by recent advances in micro- and nanofabrication methods, and the application of these devices for chemical and biomolecular analysis has only come to fruition within the past decade. This review focuses on the most exciting research in this area over the period of 2009–2011, although enabling findings and developments that precede this range are also covered. Recent reviews have summarized advances that may include some treatment of high-Q sensors, but these reviews have been broadly focused on advances in label-free sensors in general,5–8 on applications of silicon photonics that include sensing among many others,9 or on a general treatment of optical devices for sensing that includes the devices of interest.10–13 Other excellent reviews are more narrowly focused and cover different aspects of high-Q technology, focusing specifically on ring resonator technology,14, 15 microsphere resonators,16 photonic crystals,4, 17 microfluidic integration with optical sensors,18, 19 and high-Q mechanical sensors.20 This review considers recent advances in high-Q and ultra-high-Q optical sensors for addressing fundamental challenges in measurement science, giving special attention to those techniques that demonstrate useful chemical or biomolecular measurement capabilities within relevant real-world matrices. Although not rigorously fitting within some strict definitions of high-Q devices, photonic crystal sensors are covered as they represent an exciting complementary technology that, in many ways, is more advanced at present than many high-Q microcavity sensor configurations. As this review is intended to target the broad community of practicing analytical chemists, particular focus is given to signal transduction mechanisms, surface chemistry, assay methodologies, and interesting new measurement applications, leaving detailed explanations of device optics and engineering to other, more topical reviews21, 22 and the collection of articles from the optics community cited herein.

Specifically, this review will briefly discuss the theoretical basis of high-Q optical sensing, including the multitude of sensor geometries within the category of multi-pass optical sensors. Recent advances in high-Q sensor surface chemistry, capture agent immobilization, assay design, and amplification techniques are covered, as well as interesting demonstrations of these technologies in impact areas such as quantitative detection, affinity profiling, multiplexed sensing, nanoparticle analysis, light manipulation, lasers, thermal sensing, and integrated detection techniques. Finally, we provide our own critical analysis of the field in general, offering thoughts on areas in which improvements are most needed to inform the future outlook and reach the goals of high-Q optical sensing.

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High-Q optical sensors for chemical and biological analysis.

By leveraging advances in semiconductor microfabrication technologies, chip-integrated optical biosensors are poised to make an impact as scalable and multiplexable bioanalytical measurement tools for lab-on-a-chip applications. In particular, waveguide-based optical sensing technology appears to be exceptionally amenable to chip integration and miniaturization, and, as a result, the recent literature is replete with examples of chip-integrated waveguide sensing platforms developed to address a wide range of contemporary analytical challenges. As an overview of the most recent advances within this dynamic field, this review highlights work from the last 2–3 years in the areas of grating-coupled, interferometric, photonic crystal, and microresonator waveguide sensors. With a focus towards device integration, particular emphasis is placed on demonstrations of biosensing using these technologies within microfluidically controlled environments. In addition, examples of multiplexed detection and sensing within complex matrices—important features for real-world applicability—are given special attention.

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Photonics-on-a-chip: recent advances in integrated waveguides as enabling detection elements for real-world, lab-on-a-chip biosensing applications

Label-free optical resonant sensors for biochemical applications

Optical microfibers and nanofibers: A tutorial

Abstract As a combination of fiber optics and nanotechnology, optical microfibers and nanofibers (MNFs) have been emerging as a novel platform for exploring fiber-optic technology on the micro/nanoscale. Typically, MNFs taper drawn from glass optical fibers or bulk glasses show excellent surface smoothness, high homogeneity in diameter and integrity, which bestows these tiny optical fibers with low waveguiding losses and outstanding mechanical properties. Benefitting from their wavelength- or sub-wavelength-scale transverse dimensions, waveguiding MNFs exhibit a number of interesting properties, including tight optical confinement, strong evanescent fields, evident surface field enhancement and large and abnormal waveguide dispersion, which makes them ideal nanowaveguides for coherently manipulating light, and connecting fiber optics with near-field optics, nonlinear optics, plasmonics, quantum optics and optomechanics on the wavelength- or sub-wavelength scale. Based on optical MNFs, a variety of technological applications, ranging from passive micro-couplers and resonators, to active devices such as lasers and optical sensors, have been reported in recent years. This review is intended to provide an up-to-date introduction to the fabrication, characterization and applications of optical MNFs, with emphasis on recent progress in our research group. Starting from a brief introduction of fabrication techniques for physical drawing glass MNFs in Section 2, we summarize MNF optics including waveguiding modes, evanescent coupling, and bending loss of MNFs in Section 3. In Section 4, starting from a “MNF tree” that summarizes the applications of MNFs into 5 categories (waveguide & near field optics, nonlinear optics, plasmonics, quantum & atom optics, optomechanics), we go to details of typical technological applications of MNFs, including optical couplers, interferometers, gratings, resonators, lasers and sensors. Finally in Section 5 we present a brief summary of optical MNFs regarding their current challenges and future opportunities.

Optical microfibers and nanofibers

We propose an ultracompact parallel label-free biosensor based on concentric silicon-on-insulator microring resonators. Our numerical studies show that the proposed biosensor offers higher sensitiv ...

Sensitive label-free and compact biosensor based on concentric silicon-on-insulator microring resonators

We fabricate a microfiber knot-type ring resonator with a Sagnac loop reflector, and control the light velocity using the device. In this structure, light is reflected by the Sagnac loop and passes through the ring resonator twice. Thus, it possesses doubled transmission and group delay comparing with the microfiber ring resonator without the Sagnac loop. We experimentally demonstrate pulse advancement in an under-coupled microfiber knot-type ring resonator with a Sagnac loop reflector. In the experiment, a maximum of approximately 25 ps pulse advancement was achieved for a 5-Gb/s RZ signal.

http://otip.sjtu.edu.cn/publication/Journal/2010-OE-TaoWang-Enhanced%20fast%20light%20in%20microfiber.pdf

Enhanced fast light in microfiber ring resonator with a Sagnac loop reflector.

We propose a label-free biosensor based on concentric micro-ring resonators in silicon on insulator (SOI). The concentric micro-ring resonators offer another freedom to obtain deeper notches for higher detection sensitivity. The expanded modes also provide larger sensing area. A resonant frequency shift of ~1.37 nm is demonstrated, by numerical simulations, between the situation of using a single strand DNA and a double strand DNA.

/pdf/label-free-biosensor-based-on-silicon-on-insulator-4icmfl1tlm.pdf

Label-free Biosensor Based on Silicon-On-Insulator Concentric Micro-Ring Resonators

We propose an ultra-compact, label-free, parallel detection method by using an array of micro-ring resonators. Simulations of concentric micro-ring resonators with different parameters show that the device is suitable for such bio-sensing purpose.

Ultra-compact parallel label-free biosensors based on concentric micro-ring resonators in silicon-on-insulator

In this work, we have analyzed, fabricated and demonstrated concentric micro-ring resonators in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) structure for enhanced transmission notches. The operation principles of the concentric ring resonators are studied by time-domain coupled-mode theory. Directional coupling between concentric rings offers another freedom in designing deep notch optical filters and ultra-sensitiv e biosensors. The finite-difference-time-domain (FDTD) simulations have shown the improvement of the notch depth, evenly distributed mode field and the effect of the resonance shift. The device is demonstrated in silicon-on-in sulator structure. Transmission notch depth improvement of ~ 15dB is demonstrated for the 21-20.02-µm-radius double-ring structure comparing with the single 21-µm-radius ring. Keywords: concentric micro-ring resonators, silicon-on-insulator 1. INTRODUCTION Micro-ring resonators based on silicon- on-insulator (SOI) structure are promising building-blocks for ultra-compact and highly integrated photonic circuits. The fabrication technology is mostly CMOS-compatible. Potential applications include optical filtering, switching, signal processing and bio-se nsing [1]. Micro-ring resonators with high quality factors (Q) and deep transmission notches are desired in most cases. However, it is practically challenging to achieve deep notches in the transmission spectra for the single-waveguide-single-ring structure. To reach the conventional critical coupling, the resonator intrinsic factor (Q

/pdf/concentric-silicon-micro-ring-resonators-with-enhanced-2dj1r2955q.pdf

Xiaohui Li

Papers

Sensitive label-free and compact biosensor based on concentric silicon-on-insulator microring resonators

Enhanced fast light in microfiber ring resonator with a Sagnac loop reflector.

Label-free Biosensor Based on Silicon-On-Insulator Concentric Micro-Ring Resonators

Ultra-compact parallel label-free biosensors based on concentric micro-ring resonators in silicon-on-insulator

Concentric silicon micro-ring resonators with enhanced transmission notch depth