221 K Local Photothermal Heating in a Si Plasmonic Waveguide Loaded with a Co Thin Film

Photothermal heaters are important devices for optical switches and memories based on the thermo-optic/magneto-optic effect and phase change materials. We demonstrated photothermal heating in Si plasmonic waveguides loaded with Co thin films by measuring the resistance change upon inputting transverse-magnetic (TM) mode light. Temperature rise is proportional to the light intensity with clear polarization dependence. The photothermal conversion efficiency was estimated at 36 K/mW and maximum temperature rise was estimated at 221 K at steady state upon the inputting 6.3 mW TM mode light for the 400 nm-wide, 8 µm-long and 189 nm-thick Co film deposited on the Si wire waveguide with 129 nm-thick SiO2 buffer layer. The method to increase the efficiency is discussed based on the experimental and simulation results considering the thickness of the SiO2 buffer layer, Co layer and Si core layer, waveguide width, and wavelength. Local photothermal heaters in this study can be applied to a variety of fields including optical switches/memories without electrical control signals in photonic integrated circuits, on-chip optical sensors, and a lab-on-a-chip in biology, chemistry, and medicine.

Whispering gallery mode resonance excitations on a partially gold coated bottle microresonator

The study on the excitations of whispering gallery mode (WGM) resonances optical bottle microresonator (BMR) partially coated with a thin gold Au metal film is presented. The BMR was fabricated through “soften-and-compress” technique on a small section of standard optical fibre. Depositing Au particles on the spheroidal curvature of the BMR surface yields a thin metal-film of a meniscus profile with 200 nm maximum gold thickness and tapered edges. A polarization resolved experimental setup was used to excite TE- and TM-mode resonances. Coupling strengths of the excited WGMs would vary with different coupling arrangements relative to the position of the meniscus Au film. Calculated Q-factor values of composite TE and TM mode resonances were determined to be in the range 1800 and 2700, respectively.

Silicon nitride ring resonator biosensors operated at 1310 nm wavelengths via TM-mode grating couplers

In this work, we demonstrate a full photonic integrated device for performing highly-sensitive biosensing using silicon nitride ring resonators propagating transverse-magnetic modes at wavelengths around 1310 nm. The device includes fully-etched grating couplers as interfaces with external optical fibres. Sensing experiments are performed in a microfluidic environment using bovine serum albumin and anti-bovine serum albumin as biological agents. In comparison with other photonic platforms based on ring resonators propagating transverse-electric modes, our device shows a better detection performance though the efficiency of the grating couplers can be further improved.

Polarization insensitivity characterization of dual-band perfect metamaterial absorber for K band sensing applications

Polarization insensitive metamaterial absorbers (MA) are currently very attractive due to their unique absorption properties at different polarization angles. As a result, this type of absorber is widely used in sensing, imaging, energy harvesting, etc. This paper presents the design and characterization of a dual-band polarization-insensitive metamaterial absorber (MA) for K-band applications. The metamaterial absorber consists of two modified split ring resonators with an inner cross conductor to achieve a 90% absorption bandwidth of 400 MHz (21.4–21.8 GHz) and 760 MHz (23.84–24.24 GHz) at transverse electromagnetic (TEM), transverse electric (TE), and transverse magnetic (TM) mode. Polarization insensitivity of different incident angles for TE and TM mode is also investigated, which reveals a similar absorption behavior up to 90°. The metamaterial structure generates single negative (SNG) property at a lower frequency of 21.6 GHz and double negative property (DNG) at an upper frequency of 24.04 GHz. The permittivity and pressure sensor application are investigated for the proposed absorber, which shows its useability in these applications. Finally, a comparison with recent works is also performed to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed structure for K band application, like sensor, filter, invasive clock, etc.