Optical Measurements by Phase Shift Based Technique for High Sensitivity and High Resolution Detection of Chemical/Biological Substances

Abstract

In this work we demonstrate that the phase shift detection technique can be applied to reveal, with very high sensitivity and resolution, concentrations of chemical/biological substances optically detectable by measuring power variations of a light source. The system is based on the synchronous demodulation technique and employs a Si photodiode (PD) operating in photovoltaic regime biased through a small modulating sinusoidal waveform. The phase shift variations are measured between this biasing voltage and that one generated by the Si PD illuminated by the light, that interacts with the chemical/biological sample under analysis, providing the phase shift change. Experimental results demonstrate that is possible to achieve phase detection sensitivity, with respect to light power variations, up to 3100°/μW as a function of the Si PD settable operating conditions. By using a commercial lock-in amplifier with a 0.01° phase resolution, a light power variation resolution of about 3pW has been achieved. As a case-example, variations of the molar concentration of a methylene blue solution are detected by performing optical absorption standard measurements. Despite the phase resolution limitation of the used lock-in amplifier, the comparison between the data obtained through the proposed technique and those ones achieved by conventional amplitude measurements demonstrates a high improvement of the detection sensitivity. As a consequence, the measurement of molar concentration variations with a resolution of 80pM is achieved resulting 33 times higher than that one obtained with the amplitude detection.