Lab-on-chip silicon photonic sensor

We propose a design of a compact photonic sensor based on two cascaded rings in a Vernier configuration integrated with a low-resolution flat-top planar echelle grating (PEG) de-multiplexer. The Vernier rings are composed of a filter and sensor rings. The sensor maps discrete changes in the index contrast, due to the presence of a target analyte, to a set of de-multiplexer channels. The channel number with highest transmittance is directly proportional to the incremental change of the effective index. Optical characteristics at different free spectral ranges (FSRs) ranging from 1 nm to 10 nm, have been studied. For example, if a filter ring FSR of 5 nm is selected, the corresponding sensor ring and de-multiplexer FSR are 4.7 and 5 nm, respectively, whereas the limit of detection (LOD) is.