Increasing the angular sensitivity of two-dimensional photonic crystal based sensors to arbitrary values

Petru Borta (1) , Léonard Monniello (1) , M. El Kurdi (1) , Samuel Saada (2) , Sebastien Sauvage (1) , Hugues Girard (2) , Xavier Checoury (1)

1 C2N (UMR_9001) - Centre de Nanosciences et Nanotechnologies
2 LCD-LIST - Laboratoire Capteurs Diamant

A new design of photonic crystal (PhC) for optical sensing using guided mode resonance (GMR) is presented. We theoretically show that angular sensitivity is inversely proportional to the group velocity of the probed mode and can be made arbitrarily high in a properly designed PhC. PhCs made in polycrystalline diamond on insulator are fabricated. The angular sensitivity dependence is validated. We measured modes with group velocity of c/80 at a wavelength of 800 nm. A sensitivity in the order of 500 ° per refractive index unit is inferred, a value much larger than the one usually encountered in PhCs.

Keywords: photonic crystal; optical sensing; angular sensitivity; diamond; polycrystalline diamond; guided mode resonance

Domains: Material chemistry

Petru Borta, Léonard Monniello, M. El Kurdi, Samuel Saada, Sebastien Sauvage, et al.. Increasing the angular sensitivity of two-dimensional photonic crystal based sensors to arbitrary values. Optics Express, 2019, 27 (2), pp.1578. ⟨10.1364/OE.27.001578⟩. ⟨cea-02189427⟩