Mid Infrared Integrated MZI Gas Sensor Using Suspended Silicon Waveguide

A novel mid-infrared (MIR) gas sensor is proposed. A sensitivity analysis of the suspended silicon waveguide for gaseous medium index change in the MIR range is also presented. The analysis shows that a suspended silicon waveguide achieves a high sensitivity with a minimal mode loss, which allows th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of lightwave technology 2019-09, Vol.37 (17), p.4394-4400
Main Authors: El Shamy, Raghi S., Swillam, Mohamed A., Khalil, Diaa A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Design optimization
Figure of merit
Gas detectors
Gas sensor
Gas sensors
Infrared analysis
Infrared detectors
intensity interrogation
Interrogation
mid infrared
Optical sensors
Optical waveguides
Questioning
Refractive index
Sensitivity
Sensitivity analysis
Sensors
Silicon
suspended silicon waveguide
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Summary:A novel mid-infrared (MIR) gas sensor is proposed. A sensitivity analysis of the suspended silicon waveguide for gaseous medium index change in the MIR range is also presented. The analysis shows that a suspended silicon waveguide achieves a high sensitivity with a minimal mode loss, which allows the design of a high performance Mach Zehnder interferometer (MZI) gas sensor using a suspended silicon waveguide structure. Two designs are proposed and optimized using the three-dimensional finite difference time domain solver. The first design is optimized for a wavelength interrogation scheme. This design, exhibits a high wavelength sensitivity S = 7028 nm/RIU and a high figure of merit (FOM) of 180 RIU -1 for both the wavelength and intensity interrogation methods with a sensing length L sens = 250 μm. The second proposed design is optimized for the intensity interrogation scheme and enhances the intensity interrogation FOM to reach 370RIU -1 . This design, based on suspended MZI, is less sensitive to wavelength variations. Our proposed sensors offer simple, low cost, and mass scale fabrication which makes them suitable for lab on a chip technology.
ISSN:0733-8724
1558-2213
DOI:10.1109/JLT.2019.2924916