Compact optical curvature sensor with a flexible microdisk laser on a polymer substrate

Abstract

In this paper, a chip-scale compact optical curvature sensor was demonstrated. It consists of a low threshold InGaAsP microdisk laser on a flexible polydimethylsiloxane polymer substrate. The curvature dependence of lasing wavelength was characterized by bending the cavity at different bending radii. The measurements showed that the lasing wavelength decreases monotonously with an increasing bending curvature. A good agreement between experiment and three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain simulation was also obtained. The sensitivity of the compact device to the bending curvature is -23.7 nm/mm form the experiment.

A High Sensitivity Three-Dimensional-Shape Sensing Patch Prepared by Lithography and Inkjet Printing

“…Shape monitors are usually realized by deformation sensors using methodologies such as Bragg diffraction gratings [1,2], Moiré patterns [3,4], and laser distance measurements [5,6]. The optical interference takes advantages of interference by two coherent lights from a laser source and the object.…”

Whispering Gallery Mode Devices for Sensing and Biosensing

“…The sensitivity, defined as the ratio of lasing wavelength shift to the curvature bending radius, was measured to be −23.7 nm/mm −1 . The sensitivity is not higher than that measured using large-scale fiber sensors [225,226], but is sufficient for a µm size sensor to detect few micrometers of local curvature variation [203,227].…”

“…Of course, one can detect the change of the surrounding refractive index by immersing the microdisk in different analyte fluids [192][193][194][195][196][197][198][199]. Microdisks have also been tested as displacement sensors [200], gamma ray sensors [201], gas sensors [202], surface curvature sensors, [203] and of course as biosensors [194,197,[204][205][206][207][208][209][210]. Each of these applications will be briefly discussed.…”

Photonic Materials for Sensing, Biosensing and Display Devices

“…Their sol-gel film consists of TiO 2 , SiO 2 , and mixed SiO 2 -TiO 2 films which possess controllable spectral characteristics in the overall visible region. By using this sol-gel film as a resonator, a red-green-blue pixelated liquid-crystal laser was also demonstrated, at the same time, spatially controllable red, green, and blue lasing emissions were acquired in a single lasing device with pixelated cavity and active medium by single-wavelength optical pumping [203]. Recently, Chen et al prepared mechanochromic elastic photonic hydrogels.…”