Numerical analysis of an infrared gas sensor utilizing an indium-tin-oxide-based plasmonic slot waveguide

Plasmonic waveguides have attracted much attention owing to the associated high field intensity at the metal–dielectric interface and their ability to confine the modes at the nanometer scale. At the same time, they suffer from relatively high propagation loss, which is due to the presence of metal. Several alternative materials have been introduced to replace noble metals, such as transparent conductive oxides (TCOs). A particularly popular TCO is indium tin oxide (ITO), which is compatible with standard microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. In this work, the feasibility of ITO as an alternative plasmonic material is investigated for infrared absorption sensing applications: we numerically design and optimize an ITO-based plasmonic slot waveguide for a wavelength of 4.26 µm, which is the absorption line of CO2. Our optimization is based on a figure of merit (FOM), which is defined as the confinement factor divided by the imaginary part of the effective mode index (i.e., the intrinsic damping of the mode). The obtained optimal FOM is 3.2, which corresponds to 9 µm and 49 % for the propagation length (characterizing the intrinsic damping) and the confinement factor, respectively.

Adaptive opto-electromechanical silicon-on-insulator increased bandwidth accelerometer

This paper studies the construction of a compact one-dimension-sensing iscreased bandwidth photonic accelerometer using cascaded groups of continued sections of a 50 ng seismic mass each attached to the silicon beams of two under etched slot waveguide electrostatic phase shift elements acting as voltage-controlled adaptive-precision springs. The accelerometer sensitivity is shown to be significantly increased by applying equal electrode voltages. Simulation results indicate that the sensitivity dynamic range is about 76 dB combining both open-loop and closed-loop voltage control of the sensor. The operation bandwidth of the accelerometer may be increased up to 250 kHz due to the cascaded multi-section architecture of the sensor. This advantage gives significant relief to the limitation in bandwidth response of single section counterparts. The sensor may be designed to detect impact accelerations up to 104 ms−2 and yet can still be electrostatically driven to detect sub-gravitational accelerations. The application of negative feedback voltage control to hold the seismic mass at close distances from a standstill is shown to significantly increase the acceleration detection range. The construction uses all in-plane components based on a silicon-on-insulator template with 300 nm of silicon core thickness. The proposed electromechanical suspension system and the electric feeding arrangements are the most simple. The accelerometer performance is theoretically deterministic. The study is based on performing numerical analysis for the electromechanical suspension system. The waveguides are simulated utilizing the VPIphotonics industry standard. Applications may include the automobile and aerospace industries, underwater sonar, industrial ultrasonic detection, seismology predictions, and medical ultrasonography. Article Highlights The cascading of compact high-speed accelerometer sections allows increasing the bandwidth response of the proposed sensor by many folds compared to its single-mass single-section counterparts. The suspension structure is electrostatically controlled by two voltages enabling widely controlling the sensitivity and detection range of the accelerometer. The proposed accelerometer may fit wide applications achieving high detection speeds and super sensitivities utilizing a small footprint and power-efficient structure.

Compact Gas Sensor Using Silicon-on-Insulator Loop-Terminated Mach–Zehnder Interferometer

In this paper, we propose a compact optical gas sensor based on the widespread silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, operating in the near-infrared (NIR) region around the 1.55 µm wavelength. The sensor employs a loop-terminated Mach–Zehnder interferometer (LT-MZI) with a slot waveguide and a strip waveguide for the sensing arm and the reference arm, respectively. For the same arm length, the LT-MZI can achieve a detection limit two times lower than that of the conventional MZI. Different sensor components were designed, and the optimum dimensions were obtained using finite-difference eigenmode (FDE) and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) solvers. With a sensing arm length of only 150 μm, our sensor achieves a device sensitivity of 1070 nm/RIU and a figure-of-merit (FOM) as high as 280.8 RIU−1 at the 1.55 μm wavelength. Higher values of FOM can be attained by employing a longer sensing arm. The whole sensor is subjected to air cladding; thus, there is no need for oxide deposition and a further lithography step for sensing-area patterning. The sensor is well suited for low-cost fabrication and large-scale production. Finally, the same LT-MZI device with strip and slot arms but with oxide cladding was fabricated and characterized. The measurements were in good agreement with the electromagnetic (EM) simulation results, ensuring the reliability of our proposed design.

Investigation of an In-Line Slot Waveguide Sensor Built in a Tapered D-Shaped Silicon-Cored Fiber

An in-line slot waveguide sensor built in a polished flat platform of a D-shaped silicon cored fiber with a taper coupled region is proposed and investigated thoroughly. Simulation results show that the single-mode light field sustained in the silicon cored fiber can be efficiently transferred to the slot waveguides through the tapered region. The geometry parameters of the slot waveguide sensors are optimized to have the corresponding highest power confinement factors and the resultant sensor sensitivities. The three-slot waveguide sensor is found to have the best performance among one-, two- and three-slot waveguides at the mid-IR wavelength.