KEYWORDS: Waveguides, Biological and chemical sensing, Sensors, Near ultraviolet, Absorption, Chemical analysis, Wave sensors, Finite element methods, Zinc oxide, Cladding
While there has been extensive development on integrated sensors in the near-IR region due to the maturation of Si, SOI,
and III-V materials, these technologies are not easily translated into the visible and near-UV regions which are critical
for the detection of many chemicals of environmental and security interest. This work focuses on the use of wide
bandgap, amorphous materials, specifically, amorphous zinc oxide (a-ZnO), amorphous hafnium oxide (a-HfO2) and
amorphous beryllium zinc oxide (a-BeZnO), in the development of broadband chemical sensors operating at critical
absorption lines spanning the near-UV (200 nm) to the near-IR (1.55 μm).
The architecture employed for this research is a nanoscale membrane (typically 40 - 100 nm thick) that supports a
guided low optical overlap mode (LOOM) - an optical mode in which approximately 1% of the electric field is confined
to the lossy core region. The resulting extended mode has a greatly enhanced analyte overlap, yielding a device
sensitivity (~70%) that is over an order of magnitude higher than current high-performance, dielectric evanescent wave
sensors (~2%) as modeled by analytical and finite element methods. Due to the extended nature of the LOOM, sensing
across the entire spectral range can be achieved with a single waveguide design - critical for multi-point chemical
sensing architectures.
Expanded mode alignment tolerant optical structures will play an important role in low-cost, large-scale packaging of optoelectronic devices. In this paper, we present two expanded mode structures for operation at 1.55 micrometers . Our devices use single epitaxial growth and conventional fabrication schemes. High butt-coupling efficiencies (> 40%) to a single mode fiber with relaxed alignment tolerances were achieved. The first of our devices uses adiabatic transformation over 500 micrometers . The second device uses resonant coupling over a much shorter region of 200 micrometers . The second scheme offers an interesting possibility for monolithic integration of active-passive components. We present the design and simulation results of such an integrated device.
We report on two techniques developed at the University of Maryland, College Park for fabricating expanded mode laser arrays. Both of these techniques use single epitaxial growth and conventional fabrication techniques. The first of these techniques is based on adiabatic mode transformation from a tightly confined active waveguide to a loosely confined large underlying passive waveguide over a mode transmission region 500 micrometers long. The devices butt couple to a standard single mode fiber with a coupling loss of 3.6 dB and reduced farfield divergence angles of 22 degree(s) and 9 degree(s) in the transverse and lateral directions respectively. The excess mode transformation loss is 1.3 dB. The second device is based on a novel resonant coupling scheme between two waveguides of different dimensions and refractive indices. The mode is transformed over a taper length of 200 micrometers with excess mode transformation loss of 0.6 dB. Butt coupling efficiencies of 41% (3.8 dB coupling loss) is achieved to a standard single mode fiber. The farfield divergence angles achieved are 24 degree(s) and 13 degree(s) in the transverse and lateral directions respectively.
The wet oxidation kinetics of an AlAs layer used as a current aperture in selectively oxidized vertical-cavity- surface-emitting-lasers (VCSELs) is investigated in details. The process is modeled as a diffusion-reaction process. A strong dependence of the oxidation rate on the temperature, at which the wet oxidation is being carried out, is observed. The temperature dependence of the oxidation process is explained theoretically by considering equivalent reaction activation energies for the oxidation reaction. Also for oxidation over a long time interval, variation of the oxidation rate with the variation of the radius of the etched mesa of the VCSEL is observed. A theory has been developed considering the 3D diffusion of the oxidant modules is an already oxidized cylindrical AlAs region and the reaction of the diffusion of the oxidant molecules in an already oxidized cylindrical AlAs region and the reaction of the oxidant molecule at the oxidized-unoxidized AlAs interface. Relevant material parameters, that are independent of the size and geometry of the etched VCSELs, are extracted from the experimental results. Using them in the theoretical model, the rate equation of the lateral oxidation process is obtained. The theory predicts the dependence of the oxidation process on the size of the VCSEL, the AlAs layer thickness, as well as on the physical properties of the AlAs layer. The theoretical predictions have been verified by a number of experiments with reproducible results.
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