Demonstration of atomic force microscopy imaging using an integrated opto-electro-mechanical transducer

The low throughput of atomic force microscopy (AFM) is the main drawback in its large-scale deployment in industrial metrology. A promising solution would be based on the parallelization of the scanning probe system, allowing acquisition of the image by an array of probes operating simultaneously. A key step for reaching this goal relies on the...

On-chip waveguide-coupled opto-electro-mechanical system for nanoscale displacement sensing

Miniaturization of displacement sensors for nanoscale metrology is a key requirement in many applications such as accelerometry, mass sensing, and atomic force microscopy. While optics provides high resolution and bandwidth, integration of sensor readout is required to achieve low-cost, compact, and parallelizable devices. Here, we present a...

Integrated optomechanical displacement sensor based on a photonic crystal cavity

Displacement sensing at the nanoscale is required in many applications, including accelerometry, mass sensing and atomic force microscopy. Miniaturization of the sensing elements and integration of the read-out is key in achieving low cost, high resolution and high speed. Here, we present a novel integrated nano-opto-electro-mechanical device...

Anti-stiction coating for mechanically tunable photonic crystal devices

A method to avoid the stiction failure in nano-electro-opto-mechanical systems has been demonstrated by coating the system with an anti-stiction layer of Al2O3 grown by atomic layer deposition techniques. The device based on a double-membrane photonic crystal cavity can be reversibly operated from the pull-in back to its release status. This...

Detection of low concentration formaldehyde gas by photonic crystal sensor fabricated by nanoimprint process in polymer material

This paper describes experimental measurement results for photonic crystal sensor devices which have been functionalized for gas sensing applications. The sensor consists of a two dimensional photonic crystal etched into a slab waveguide having a refractive index of 1.7-1.9. Test devices were fabricated from SiON material on silicon/ silicon...

Toward large-area roll-to-roll printed nanophotonic sensors

Polymers have become an important material group in fabricating discrete photonic components and integrated optical devices. This is due to their good properties: high optical transmittance, versatile processability at relative low temperatures and potential for low-cost production. Recently, nanoimprinting or nanoimprint lithography (NIL) has...

Development of photonic crystal structures for on-board optical communication

We present designs for sharp bends in polymer waveguides using colloidal photonic crystal (PhC) structures. Both silica (SiO2) sphere based colloidal PhC and core-shell colloidal PhC structures having a titania (TiO 2) core inside silica (SiO2) shells are simulated. The simulation results show that core-shell Face Centered Cubic (FCC) colloidal...

Polymer-based optical interconnects using nanoimprint lithography

The increasing request for higher data speeds in the information and communication technology leads to continuously increasing performance of microprocessors. This has led to the introduction of optical data transmission as a replacement of electronic data transmission in most transmission applications longer than 10 meters. However, a need...

Imprinted photonic crystal chemical sensors

In this paper we present the use of Photonic Crystals as chemical sensors. These 2D nanostructured sensors were prepared by nano-imprint lithography during which a nanostructure is transferred from a nickel template into a responsive polymer, that is be specifically tuned to interact with the chemical compound that must be detected. By creating...