High-performance Refractive Index Sensor Based on Photonic Crystal Single Mode Resonant Micro-cavity

An effective refractive index sensor built with square lattice photonic crystal is proposed,which can be applicable to photonic integrated circuits.Two photonic crystal waveguides rather than conventional ridge waveguides are used as entrance/exit waveguides to the micro-cavity.Three layers of photonic lattice are set between the photonic crystal waveguides and the micro-cavity to achieve both a high transmission and a high sensitivity.The plane wave method is utilized to calculate the disperse curves and the finite difference time domain scheme is employed to simulate the light propagation.At the resonant wavelength of about 1500 nm,the resonant wavelength shifts up by 0.7 nm for each increment of Δn=0.001.A transmission of more than 0.75 is observed.Although the position disorder of the photonic crystal doesn't affect the sensitivity of the sensor, the transmission reduces rapidly as the disorder increases.

An effective refractive index sensor built with square lattice photonic crystal is proposed, which can be applicable to photonic integrated circuits. Two photonic crystal waveguides rather than conventional ridge waveguides are used as entrance/exit waveguides to the micro-cavity. Three layers of photonic lattice are set between the photonic crystal waveguides and the micro-cavity to achieve both a high transmission and a high sensitivity. The plane wave method is utilized to calculate the disperse curves and the finite difference time domain scheme is employed to simulate the light propagation. At the resonant wavelength of about 1500 nm, the resonant wavelength shifts up by 0.7 nm for each increment of △n=0.001. A transmission of more than 0.75 is observed. Although the position disorder of the photonic crystal doesn＇t affect the sensitivity of the sensor, the transmission reduces rapidly as the disorder increases.