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Thanks to the unique molecular fingerprints in the mid-infrared spectral region, absorption spectroscopy in this regime has attracted widespread attention in recent years. Contrary to commercially available infrared spectrometers, which are limited by being bulky and cost-intensive, laboratory-on-chip infrared spectrometers can offer sensor advancements including raw sensing performance in addition to utilization such as enhanced portability. Several platforms have been proposed in the past for on-chip ethanol detection. However, selective sensing with high sensitivity at room temperature has remained a challenge. Here, we experimentally demonstrate an on-chip ethyl alcohol sensor based on a holey photonic crystal waveguide on silicon on insulator-based photonics sensing platform offering an enhanced photoabsorption thus improving sensitivity. This is achieved by designing and engineering an optical slow-light mode with a high group-index ofn_g = 73 and a strong localization of the modal power in analyte, enabled by the photonic crystal waveguide structure. This approach includes a codesign paradigm that uniquely features an increased effective path length traversed by the guided wave through the to-be-sensed gas analyte. This PIC-based lab-on-chip sensor is exemplary, spectrally designed to operate at the center wavelength of 3.4 μm to match the peak absorbance for ethanol. However, the slow-light enhancement concept is universal offering to cover a wide design-window and spectral ranges towards sensing a plurality of gas species. Using the holey photonic crystal waveguide, we demonstrate the capability of achieving parts per billion levels of gas detection precision. High sensitivity combined with tailorable spectral range along with a compact form-factor enables a new class of portable photonic sensor platforms when integrated with quantum cascade laser and detectors.

 

In this paper, we demonstrated the design and experimental results of the near-infrared lab-on-a-chip optical biosensor platform that monolithically integrates the MRR and the on-chip spectrometer on the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer, which can eliminate the external optical spectrum analyzer for scanning the wavelength spectrum. The symmetric add-drop MRR biosensor is designed to have a free spectral range (FSR) of ∼19 nm and a bulk sensitivity of ∼73 nm/RIU; then the drop-port output resonance peaks are reconstructed from the integrated spatial-heterodyne Fourier transform spectrometer (SHFTS) with the spectral resolution of ∼3.1 nm and the bandwidth of ∼50 nm, which results in the limit of detection of 0.042 RIU.

 

In the context of continued spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 and the emergence of new variants, the demand for rapid, accurate, and frequent detection is increasing. Moreover, the new predominant strain, Omicron variant, manifests more similar clinical features to those of other common respiratory infections. The concurrent detection of multiple potential pathogens helps distinguish SARS-CoV-2 infection from other diseases with overlapping symptoms, which is significant for providing tailored treatment to patients and containing the outbreak. Here, we report a lab-on-a-chip biosensing platform for SARS-CoV-2 detection based on the subwavelength grating micro-ring resonator. The sensing surface is functionalized by specific antibody against SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which could produce redshifts of resonant peaks by antigen–antibody combination, thus achieving quantitative detection. Additionally, the sensor chip is integrated with a microfluidic chip featuring an anti-backflow Y-shaped structure that enables the concurrent detection of two analytes. In this study, we realized the detection and differentiation of COVID-19 and influenza A H1N1. Experimental results indicate that the limit of detection of our device reaches 100 fg/ml (1.31 fM) within 15 min detecting time, and cross-reactivity tests manifest the specificity of the optical diagnostic assay. Furthermore, the integrated packaging and streamlined workflow facilitate its use for clinical applications. Thus, the biosensing platform presents a promising approach for attaining highly sensitive, selective, multiplexed, and quantitative point-of-care diagnosis and distinction between COVID-19 and influenza.

 

We demonstrated the design and experimental results of the near-infrared lab-on-a-chip optical biosensor platform that monolithically integrates the micro-ring-resonator and the on-chip spectrometer on the SOI wafer with the limit of detection of 0.042 RIU.

 

On-chip broadband optical spectrometers that cover the entire tissue transparency window (λ = 650–1050 nm) with high resolution are highly demanded for miniaturized biosensing and bioimaging applications. The standard spatial heterodyne Fourier transform spectrometer (SHFTS) requires a large number of Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) arrays to obtain a broad spectral bandwidth while maintaining high resolution. Here, we propose a novel type of SHFTS integrated with a subwavelength grating coupler (SWGC) for the dual-polarization bandpass sampling on the Si3N4 platform to solve the intrinsic trade-off limitation between the bandwidth and resolution of the SHFTS without having an outrageous number of MZI arrays or adding additional active photonic components. By applying the bandpass sampling theorem, the continuous broadband input spectrum is divided into multiple narrow-band channels through tuning the phase-matching condition of the SWGC with different polarization and coupling angles. Thereby, it is able to reconstruct each band separately far beyond the Nyquist criterion without aliasing error or degrading the resolution. We experimentally demonstrated the broadband spectrum retrieval results with the overall bandwidth coverage of 400 nm, bridging the wavelengths from 650 to 1050 nm, with a resolution of 2–5 nm. The bandpass sampling SHFTS is designed to have 32 linearly unbalanced MZIs with the maximum optical path length difference of 93 μm within an overall footprint size of 4.7 mm × 0.65 mm, and the coupling angles of SWGC are varied from 0° to 32° to cover the entire tissue transparency window. 

We demonstrated the monolithically integrated biosensor with micro-ring-resonator (MRR) and spatial-heterodyne Fourier-transform-spectrometer (SH-FTS) on Si3N4-on-SiO2, substituting the external optical spectrum analyzer. The spectrum is retrieved from SH-FTS with the bulk sensitivity of 42.9 nm/RIU. 

An engineered structure based on InGaAs-InP subwavelength grating waveguide is proposed on QCL/QCD platform for sensing application. The proposed structure attribute slow light effect with fine group index tuning capability of 0.48nm/K using thermo-optic effect.

 

In this paper, we present a hollow-core vertical photonic crystal waveguide geometry in silicon for gas detection in the mid-infrared region. The dispersion is engineered to enhance light-matter interactions inside the hollow-core defect.