High quality factor and high sensitivity chalcogenide 1D photonic crystal microbridge cavity for mid-infrared sensing

We present and theoretically investigate a mid-infrared (mid-IR) optical sensor based on a Ge11.5As24Se64.5 one-dimensional photonic crystal microbridge cavity (PhC-MC). Optimizing the structure of the PhC-MC strongly confines the resonant mode field to the air region, thereby greatly enhancing the overlap and interaction of the light field and target analytes. A high calculated sensitivity (2280 nm per refractive index unit) is achieved with a resonant wavelength of 4132 nm. The figure of merit of the device for sensing is extremely high (929,750) because of the high quality factor and sensitivity of the cavity. The sensing part of the cavity is also small (50×3 µm2). The proposed PhC-MC can be an ideal platform for on-chip integrated mid-IR optical sensing.