Surface Sensitivity Optimization of a Microring Resonator for Biochemical Sensing

Abstract

A compact optical biosensor based on a microring resonator is proposed in this work. CMOS compatible technology based on silicon nitride deposited by low-pressure chemical vapour deposition (LPCVD) on silicon oxide has been adopted in the design. Surface sensing has been exploited, to be used in a wide range of biochemical applications, such as DNA sequencing by hybridization, antigen-antibody reactions study or pollution concentration measure in water. A semi-analytic approach supported by finite element method has been proposed to estimate and optimize the device sensitivity. Finally sensor functionality has been proved by finite difference time domain approach