Engineers of the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a microspectrometer architecture that utilizes small disc-shaped resonators to resolve the issues of in-built lab-on-chip sensing solutions.
Microspectrometer
The 81-channel spectrometer attained a resolution of 0.6 nm over a spectral region of over 50 nm. It can be combined with devices such as microfluidic channels, microelectronics, optoelectronics, and sensors for utilization in pharmaceutical, medical, chemical, and biological applications.
The research work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Ali Adibi, Georgia Institute’s Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering stated that the microspectrometer attained high resolution by utilizing a range of microdonut resonators having a diameter of 2 µ. The team is presently developing the next series of spectrometers, which can attain a resolution of 0.15 nm and contain a maximum of 1000 resonators.
In addition to Adibi, former research engineers, Siva Yegnanarayanan and Babak Momeni and a research engineer, Ali A. Eftekhar were involved in designing and implementing the microspectrometer by utilizing fabrication procedures. The team used a range of microdonut resonators to develop the microspectrometer. The researchers altered the microdonut resonators’ wavelengths by engineering the geometry. The researchers claim that the microspectrometer’s design also has the capacity to configure and control the operating bandwidth and resolution independently.