Optofluidic Sensor Based on Polymer Optical Microresonators for the Specific, Sensitive and Fast Detection of Chemical and Biochemical Species.

The accurate, rapid, and specific detection of DNA strands in solution is becoming increasingly important, especially in biomedical applications such as the trace detection of COVID-19 or cancer diagnosis. In this work we present the design, elaboration and characterization of an optofluidic sensor based on a polymer-based microresonator which shows a quick response time, a low detection limit and good sensitivity. The device is composed of a micro-racetrack waveguide vertically coupled to a bus waveguide and embedded within a microfluidic circuit.

Comparative analysis of recirculating and collimating cesium ovens.

We have performed a study of several cesium oven designs. A comparison between recirculating (or sticking-wall) and collimating (or re-emitting-wall) ovens is made in order to extract the most efficient design in terms of beam brightness. Unfortunately, non-reproducible behaviors have been observed, and the most often observed output flux is similar to the sticking-wall case, which is the lowest theoretical value of the two cases, with a beam brightness close to 10 at.