Resonant Biochemical Sensors Based on Photonic Bandgap Waveguides and Fibers

I describe photonic bandgap (PBG) fiber-based resonant optical sensors of analyte’s refractive index which have recently invoked strong interest due to the development of novel fiber types and of techniques for the activation of fiber microstructure with functional materials. Particularly, I consider two sensors types. One employs hollow-core photonic bandgap fibers where the core-guided mode is confined in the analyte’s filled core through resonant effect in the surrounding periodic reflector. The other employs metallized photonic bandgap waveguides and fibers, where core-guided mode is phase-matched with a plasmon wave propagating at the fiber/analyte interface. In resonant sensors, one typically employs fibers with strongly nonuniform spectral transmission characteristics that are sensitive to changes in the real part of the analyte’s refractive index. Moreover, if narrow absorption lines are present in the analyte transmission spectrum, due to Kramers– Kronig relation, this will also result in strong variation in the real part of the refractive index in the vicinity of an absorption line. Therefore, resonant sensors allow detection of minute changes both in the real part of the analyte’s refractive index (10 6 10 4 RIU) and in the imaginary part of the analyte’s refractive index in the vicinity of absorption lines. Although the operational principle of almost all PBG fiber-based sensors relies on strong sensitivity of the PBG fiber losses to the value of the analyte’s refractive index, particular transduction mechanisms for biodetection vary significantly. Finally, I detail various sensor implementations, modes of operation, as well as analysis of sensitivities for some of the common transduction mechanisms for biosensing applications.