Silicon on-chip side-coupled high-Q micro-cavities for the multiplexing of high sensitivity photonic crystal integrated sensors array

• A photonic crystal micro-cavity with high Q-factor and sensitivity is presented.
• Both high sensitivity of 200 nm/RIU and Q~6×104 can be achieved simultaneously.
• An optimal design of photonic crystal integrated sensors array is displayed.
• The sensor figure of merit >7000 is featured.
• An ideal platform for ultra-compact lab-on-a-chip multiplexed sensing.

A novel two-dimensional (2D) silicon (Si) photonic crystal (PC) α-H0-slot micro-cavity with high Q-factor and high sensitivity (S) is presented. Based on the proposed α-H0-Slot micro-cavities, an optimal design of photonic crystal integrated sensors array (PC-ISA) on monolithic silicon on insulator (SOI) is displayed. By using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, the simulation results demonstrate that both large S of 200 nm/RIU (RIU=refractive index unit) and high Q-factor >104 at telecom wavelength range can be achieved simultaneously. And the sensor figure of merit (FOM)>7000 is featured, an order of magnitude improvement over previous 2D PC sensors array. In addition, for the proposed 2D PC-ISA device, each sensor unit is shown to independently shift its resonance wavelength in response to the changes in refractive index (RI) and does not perturb the others. Thus, it is potentially an ideal platform for realizing ultra-compact lab-on-a-chip applications with dense arrays of functionalized spots for multiplexed sensing, and also can be used as an opto-fluidic architecture for performing highly parallel detection of biochemical interactions in aqueous environments.