Design of Photonic Crystals Waveguide Using Microfluidic Infiltration

Abstract

The use of photonic crystals (PCS) in biosensor applications has lead to the development of highly sensitive and selective microfluidic sensor elements. Two main advantages of these devices for sensing applications are their high sensitivity and their reduced size, which makes it possible, in one hand, to detect very small analytes without the need of markers (label-free detection), and to integrate many of these devices on a single chip to perform a multi-parameter detection on the other hand. In the present paper, we analyze the design of a highly sensitive microfluidic sensors based on 2D photonic crystal slab waveguide formed by increasing the radii of air holes localized at each side of the line defect and filling with homogenous de-ionized water (nc =1.33). The transmission spectrum of the sensor has been obtained with the use of Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method and it has been observed that a 306 nm wavelength position of the lower band edge shift was observed corresponding to a sensitivity of more than 927 nm per refractive index unit (RIU). Development of microfluidic sensor designs that enhance sensitivity is especially important because it allows detection of lower concentrations of analytes.