Micro and Nano Optical Sensors

Optical MEMS have great potential in a number of industrial applications. We intend to address two innovation areas that are powerful enablers of our vision of an intelligent environment: i) optical spectroscopy, and ii) sensors based on photonic crystals . Both these areas require advances in micro- and nanostructuring techniques. Optical spectroscopy is a powerful measurement tool that can contribute to the sensor technology required to solve a number of important societal problems, such as cost-efficien t recycling, protection of people from harmful gases, and ensuring food safety. Present spectroscometers are too costly and too bulky for most of these applications, however. The purpose of this proposed topic is to develop the technology for a new genera tion of dedicated optical spectroscometers that are based on silicon technology, and that are suitable for incorporation in consumer products. This new technology makes possible the miniaturization and integration of several optical functions on the same chip and to tailor the spectrometer capabilities to a given task, thus reducing the production cost of the whole sensor system by a factor of 10 to 100, with no performance compromises. MOEMS spectrometers can be used to detect and analyze small concentra tions of gases. They are however, not sensitive enough to detect single molecules. In order to reach the goal of single molecule detection, we intend to use photonic crystals. Though the technology is less mature in this field we believe the future reward s to be great.