Photothermal nano-cavities for ultra-sensitive chem-bio detection

• Main Authors: Hu, Juejun (Author), Musgraves, J. David (Author), Carlie, Nathan (Author), Agarwal, Anuradha Murthy (Contributor), Richardson, Kathleen (Author), Kimerling, Lionel C. (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SPIE, 2012-08-09T15:48:31Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

Tuesday 26 April 2011- Orlando, Florida, USA Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNE) Sensing XII
Nano-cavity photothermal spectroscopy is a novel technique for ultra-sensitive chem-bio detection. We illustrate that through simultaneous localization of optical and thermal interactions in a planar nano-cavity, detection sensitivity can be improved by > 10[superscript 4] compared to state-of-the-art. Key to nano-cavity photothermal sensing is the use of novel infraredtransparent chalcogenide glasses for resonant cavity fabrication, as these glasses feature a photothermal figure-of-merit over two orders of magnitude higher than conventional materials. We demonstrate planar optical resonant cavity devices in these glasses with record cavity quality factors up to 5 × 10[superscript 5], leading to high photothermal detection sensitivity.