An all-polymer photonic crystal slab sensor is presented, and shown to exhibit narrow resonant reflection with a FWHM of less than 1 nm and a sensitivity of 31 nm/RIU. This results in a detection limit of 4.5 × 10^(−6) RIU.
Title
All-polymer photonic crystal slab sensor
Authors
Pétur G. Hermannsson, Kristian T. Sørensen, Christoph Vannahme, Cameron L.C. Smith, Jan J. Klein, Maria-Melanie Russew, Gabi Grützner, and Anders Kristensen
Abstract
An all-polymer photonic crystal slab sensor is presented, and shown to exhibit narrow resonant reflection with a FWHM of less than 1 nm and a sensitivity of 31 nm/RIU when sensing media with refractive indices around that of water. This results in a detection limit of 4.5 × 10−6 RIU when measured in conjunction with a spectrometer of 12 pm/pixel resolution. The device is a two-layer structure, composed of a low refractive index polymer with a periodically modulated surface height, covered with a smooth upper-surface high refractive index inorganic-organic hybrid polymer modified with ZrO2-based nanoparticles. Furthermore, it is fabricated using inexpensive vacuum-less techniques involving only UV nanoreplication and polymer spin-casting, and is thus well suited for single-use biological and refractive index sensing applications.
DOI link
https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.23.016529
DTU orbit
https://orbit.dtu.dk/files/114170528/All_polymer_photonic_crystal_slab_sensor.pdf