Numerical study of temperature and pressure effect on one dimensional random photonic crystal used as biosensors in the detection of breast cancer cells

Abstract

For the past few decades, investigations of cancer cells were made using periodic/defective-periodic photonic structures. Utilizing the unique properties of a disordered photonic crystal for detecting the bio-analytes is still missing. This work incorporates the opto-biological properties of one-dimensional random photonic systems to design the two differently randomized biosensors for sensing breast cancer cells. These random sensors are differentiated from one another based on their random arrangements and random thicknesses. To obtain efficient outcomes, the thickness of the dielectric layers and sensing layer is optimized. Through the transfer matrix method, the sensing characteristics of the biosensors are investigated for different pressures (0–6 GPa) and temperatures (−125 °C to 25 °C). At the optimal range, the proposed Biosensors I and II, show a high sensitivity of 1372.549 nm/RIU. Among both sensors, Random Biosensor I exhibits a high-quality factor of 12925, a maximum FOM of 4575.163 RIU−1, and a very low detection limit in the order of 5.82857E-06 RIU. The designed sensor is capable of sensing very minuscule changes in the bio-analytes effectually. The proposed biosensor shows high sensitivity than the previous literature even in the normal incident of light.