Top-Down Approach to the Fabrication of GaN-based Photonic Crystal Biosensor
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1133-AA07-15
Top-Down Approach to the Fabrication of GaN-based Photonic Crystal Biosensor B. M. Hamza1, H. Yalamanchili1, H. Andagana1, X. Cao1, L. A. Hornak1, J. M. Dawson1,2, D. Korakakis1, 3 1
Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA. 2 Department of Physics, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA. 3 National Energy Technology Laboratory, Morgantown, WV, USA ABSTRACT Combining optics and microfluidics to create a portable optofluidic photonic crystal (PhC) biosensor is an approach with promising applications in the fields of counter-terrorism, agricultural sciences, and health sciences [1, 2]. Presented here are fabrication processes of a gallium nitride (GaN)-based PhC biosensor with a resonance-enhanced fluorescence detection mechanism that shows potential for meeting the single molecule detection requirements of these application areas. GaN is being targeted as the photonic crystal slab material for two main reasons: its transparency in the visible spectral range, within which the excitation and emission wavelengths of the commercial fluorescent-labeling dyes fall, and its intrinsic thermal stability which provides an increased flexibility of operating in different environments. Optical modeling efforts indicate a 25-fold enhancement of the fluorescent emission in this portable fluorescentbased PhC biosensor [3]. INTRODUCTION The main theme of the 20th century in the fields of electrical engineering and electronics was to control the electrical properties of materials. Semiconductor physics allowed researchers to use the periodic potential of a lattice to manipulate the flow of charge carriers which eventually initiated the transistor revolution and its huge impact in society since then [4]. The goal then shifted to engineered materials that could allow complete control over the propagation of light; confining it to certain directions and/or frequencies and localize it in specified areas [5]. This new theme, which emerged in the late 1980s with the publications of Yablonovitch and John [6, 7], has had a tremendous impact on the telecommunications industry and predicted the existence of periodically-structured photonic crystal (PhC) materials. Such materials have allowed the engineering of photonic bandgaps by periodically varying the refractive index in 1, 2, or 3 dimensions [3]. Therefore, combining the desirable optical properties of these PhC materials with the utilization of their nano- and micro-scale structures to create optofluidic biosensors is the main purpose of this work. Modeling efforts [3] have already shown that the photonic crystal defect structures could be engineered to act as waveguides, as well as optical resonant cavities and microfluidic flow channels. Such a model is expected to offer a reusable biosensing system that overcomes the complexity of the existing biomolecule-binding-based biosensors and their reusability limitations due to the fact that they could be fouled after a single measurement. The labeled bi
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