Integrated Optical Sensors

Since the start of the group IOMS in the mid-eighties of the last century its research had a strong focus on integrated optical (IO) sensors. A large number of different sensor device concepts, based on for example plasmonics [1] quenching of luminescence [1,2] and a large number of interferometric principles [3, 4] have been proposed and tested; part of the work has led to commercial follow ups. Sensing devices have been designed, fabricated and characterized for the bio-chemical domain and also for measuring deflections of micro-mechanical objects. Below we will discuss the commercialized IO sensor platform, based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI), which had an unprecedented sensitivity at the time of development [3]. Next we will show some results of recent work on grating-based, IO label-free enzyme sensing and the IO read-out of stressinduced micro-bridge deflection. As the stress was induced by H2 gas adsorption by a Pd layer on top of the micro-bridge the device can be used as a H2 sensor.