C-band operating plasmonic sensor with a high Q-factor/figure of merit based on a silicon nano-ring.

In this paper, we take advantage of the high refractive index property of silicon to design a practical and sensitive plasmonic sensor on a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) platform. It has been demonstrated that a label-free refractive index sensor with sensitivity up to 1124 nm/RIU can be obtained using a simple design of a silicon nano-ring with a concentric hexagonal plasmonic cavity. It has also been shown that, with optimum structural parameters, a quality factor (Q-factor) of 307 and a figure of merit (FOM) of 234 can be achieved, which are approximately 8 times and 5 times higher than the proposed sensors counterparts, respectively.

Integrated vortex beam emitter device for optical manipulation.

In this study, we provide a theoretical overview for the potential of the integrated vortex beam emitter (IVBE) in optical tweezer applications. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt in the literature to investigate the optical tweezing property of IVBE. The finite-difference time-domain numerical analysis technique has been utilized for the transverse optical trapping calculations.

Fast hydrogen detection via plasmonic metal-insulator-metal technology.

In this study, a nanoscale sensor on a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) platform was studied numerically to investigate its hydrogen detection potential. The plasmonic MIM structure, which consists of an air micro-ring resonator (MRR) and a palladium (Pd) disk, is used for this purpose. The results of the numerical study show that when the optimum geometric design parameters are employed, a sensitivity as high as 267 pm/(v/v-% hydrogen) can be obtained.

Integrated optical vortex beam receivers.

A simple and ultra-compact integrated optical vortex beam receiver device is presented. The device is based on the coupling between the optical vortex modes and whispering gallery modes in a micro-ring resonator via embedded angular gratings, which provides the selective reception of optical vortex modes with definitive total angular momentum (summation of spin and orbital angular momentum) through the phase matching condition in the coupling process. Experimental characterization confirms the correct detection of the total angular momentum carried by the vortex beams incident on the device.