Photonic Crystal Cavities for Sensing Applications
Summary
Photonic crystal cavities employ a periodic modulation of refractive index to confine and manipulate light within ultra-small volumes, yielding resonances that are highly sensitive to minute changes in the local optical environment. By engineering defects in one-dimensional or two-dimensional photonic lattices, it is possible to create modes with high quality factors (Q), small mode volumes and narrow linewidths. Such properties enable detection of variations in refractive index, temperature, mechanical motion or molecular binding via shifts in resonant wavelength or changes in resonance amplitude. Integration on silicon-on-insulator platforms, compatibility with deep-UV or CMOS-compatible fabrication, and the potential for lab-on-chip architectures render photonic crystal cavity sensors attractive for applications ranging from point-of-care diagnostics and environmental monitoring to industrial process control. Emerging approaches exploit Fano resonances for enhanced figure of merit, phase-change materials for tunable response and multi-slot geometries for maximised light–matter interaction, paving the way for compact, low-power and multiplexed sensing arrays.
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Photonic Crystal Cavities for Sensing Applications publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in photonic crystal cavities for sensing applications across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Photonic crystal cavity: A defect in a periodic dielectric structure that localises light at a resonant wavelength.
Quality factor (Q): A dimensionless measure of resonance sharpness, defined as the ratio of stored energy to energy lost per cycle.
Mode volume: The effective spatial region over which the optical field is confined, often expressed in cubic wavelengths.
Fano resonance: An asymmetric spectral feature arising from interference between a discrete resonant state and a continuum of states.
Refractive index unit (RIU): A standard increment of refractive index change used to quantify sensor sensitivity.
References
- Scalable high Q-factor Fano resonance from air-mode photonic crystal nanobeam cavity. Nanophotonics (2023).
- Broadband-Tunable Vanadium Dioxide (VO2)-Based Linear Optical Cavity Sensor. Nanomaterials (2024).
- Multi-slot photonic crystal cavities for high-sensitivity refractive index sensing.. Optics Express (2019).
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