Nonspecific detection of lead ions in water using a simple integrated optical polarimetric interferometer

Abstract

Real-time detection of heavy metal ions in water was implemented by using a composite optical waveguide (COWG) based polarimetric interferometer. The COWG was made by local deposition of a tapered nanometric layer of high-index materials onto a single-mode slab glass waveguide, and it is a low-cost robust waveguide with a locally large modal birefringence. The COWG-based polarimetric interferometer operates with a single incident laser beam and uses the transverse electric and transverse magnetic modes as the sensing and reference beams, respectively, and it can easily detect 0.1 ppm lead(II) ions in water via nonspecific adsorption on the tapered layer of TiO2. The excellent linearity was obtained between the lead(II) concentration and the ratio of concentration to the phase-difference change (Δϕ), suggesting that adsorption of lead(II) ions on the TiO2 film follows the Langmuir isotherm model. The saturation adsorption leads to Δϕmax = 7.485π. By use of the eigenvalue equations for a homogeneous waveguide to fit the measured refractive-index (RI) sensitivity of the interferometer, the equivalent thickness of Teq = 26.05 nm for the tapered TiO2 layer used was achieved. With Teq = 26.05 nm and Δϕmax = 7.485π and the thickness of 0.264 nm for the lead(II) adlayer, the adlayer RI was derived to be nad ≈ 1.945 at the maximum coverage.