The fabrication of polymer-based evanescent optical waveguide for biosensing

A polymer waveguide was fabricated to amplify the evanescent optical field for biosensing. The structure of waveguide was designed to propagate a normal single mode at the input and output regions for low loss beam coupling and propagation. A sensing region was formed in the middle of the waveguide to activate the evanescent mode and to induce high birefringence by depositing a thin dielectric film with a high refractive index on a single mode waveguide. A polymer waveguide with the dimensions of 7 μm-width and 2.5 μm-thickness was fabricated by photolithography and dry-etching. The active region of the TiO2 thin film was fabricated with the dimensions of 20 mm-length, 20 nm-thickness and 2 mm-tapered tail. A polarimetric interference technique was used to evaluate the evanescent waveguide biosensor, and biomaterial such as glycerol was tested. The sensitivity of the sensor increased with increasing TiO2 film thickness. For the fabricated waveguide with a 20 nm-thick TiO2 film, the measured index change to the lead phase variation of 2π was 1.8 × 10−4.