US 7389025 B2
An optical microresonator device is described including an optical waveguide and an optical microresonator positioned so as to optically couple to the waveguide. The waveguide includes a core and a metal cladding layer on at least part of one boundary of the core.
1. An optical microresonator device, comprising:
an optical waveguide, wherein the waveguide comprises a core and a metal cladding layer on at least a part of one boundary of the core; and
an optical microresonator positioned so as to optically couple to the waveguide.
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17. An optical microresonator device, comprising:
an optical waveguide, comprising:
a dielectric core, wherein the core includes a ridge, and
a metal cladding layer on at least a part of one boundary of the core,
wherein the metal cladding layer has a thickness that exceeds two times the skin depth of the metal at the operating wavelength; and
an optical microresonator positioned so as to optically couple to the waveguide;
wherein the metal cladding layer is on at least a part of a first side of the optical waveguide core ridge and the microresonator is positioned on a second, opposite side of the core ridge;
wherein the metal cladding layer is present on the waveguide core only along a section of core proximate to the resonator.
The present invention is directed generally to optical devices based on microresonators coupled to waveguides.
Dielectric cavity optical resonators have attracted increasing attention in sensing applications, including biosensing. Typically these resonators consist of either microspheres, or of planar-waveguide-based disk or ring cavities. The size of these types of resonators typically ranges from approximately 20 microns to a few millimeters for microspheres and from 5 microns to several hundreds of microns for ring- or disk-shaped resonators. Such small spheres and ring- or disk-shaped resonators are often referred to as microresonators.
In the most common configuration in microresonator-based sensors, a microresonator is placed in close proximity to an optical waveguide such as optical fiber whose geometry has been specifically tailored, for example, tapered or etched to a size of 1-5 microns. The tapering modifications to the waveguide result in there being a substantial optical field outside the waveguide, and thus light can couple into the microresonator and excite its eigenmodes. These eigenmodes may be of various types, depending upon the resonant cavity geometry. For spherical and disk cavities, the modes of interest for sensing applications are usually the so-called “whispering gallery modes” (WGMs), which are traveling waves confined close to the surface of the cavity. Since the WGMs are confined near the surface, they are well-suited to coupling with analytes on or near the sphere surface.
For ring cavities based on single-mode waveguides, the modes are those of the single-transverse-mode channel waveguide, under the constraint that the path traversed corresponds to an integral number of wavelengths. Other cavity geometries, such as Fabry-Perot resonators using single-mode waveguides with Bragg grating reflectors, or multimode rectangular cavities, have familiar standing-wave resonances as their eigenmodes.
When microresonators made with low loss materials and with high surface reflectivity and quality are used, the loss of light confined in the resonant modes is very low, and extremely high quality factors, also known as Q-factors, can be achieved, as high as 109. Due to the high Q-factor, the light can circulate inside the resonator for a very long time, thus leading to a very large field enhancement in the cavity mode, and a very long effective light propagation path. This makes such devices useful for non-linear optical and sensing applications. In sensing applications, the samples to be sensed are placed on or very near the resonator's surface, where they interact with the evanescent portion of the resonant electric field available outside the microresonator. Due to the enhanced field and the increased interaction length between the light and samples, the microresonator-based optical sensors feature high sensitivity and/or a low detection limit.
In the most-commonly-pursued configuration, in which a microsphere resonator is coupled to a tapered optical fiber, there are practical difficulties associated with realizing efficient and stable coupling. First, in order to make the optical field in the fiber core available outside the fiber's surface, the fiber must be tapered to a few microns in diameter. This commonly results in a relatively long (a few cm) and fragile tapered region. Second, the relative position of the microsphere and the fiber taper must be held constant to within a few nanometers if the optical coupling and the Q-factor are to remain constant. This is difficult with a free sphere and tapered fiber.
In another configuration commonly used to couple with microspheres, an angle polished fiber is put into contact with the microsphere. In this case the problems associated with the fragility of the fiber taper are overcome, but there are still significant difficulties in positioning the microsphere properly on the fiber tip. Furthermore, light which is not coupled into the microsphere, representing the so-called “through port” signal, is not confined to a fiber and is therefore difficult to collect and analyze.
There is a need for improved methods and structures for coupling a waveguide to a microresonator.
An optical microresonator device is described, including an optical waveguide and an optical microresonator positioned so as to optically couple to the waveguide. The waveguide includes a core and a metal cladding layer on at least a part of one boundary of the core.
The invention may be more completely understood by considering the detailed description of various embodiments of the invention that follows in connection with the accompanying drawings.
While the invention may be modified in many ways, specifics have been shown by way of example in the drawings and will be described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the intention is not to limit the invention to the particular embodiments described. On the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives following within the scope and spirit of the invention as defined by the claims.
The present invention is applicable to optical microresonator devices, in particular where an optical waveguide is coupled to an optical microresonator. Devices based on the coupling of a waveguide to one or more microresonators are particularly useful in the context of sensors, filters, telecommunications devices, and microlasers.
Metal clad waveguides are known, but have not previously been seen by the inventors to be coupled to a microresonator. Historically, perhaps a metal clad waveguide has not been suggested for coupling to a microresonator because metal claddings have a higher degree of optical loss than other cladding structures. It has been discovered that by using a metal clad waveguide with an optical microresonator, it is possible to efficiently couple light from a metal-clad waveguide to a microresonator with an acceptable amount of loss, and achieve many other benefits with some embodiments. More of these benefits will be described herein.
The metal cladding layer is positioned in different locations in different embodiments. The waveguide core outer surfaces define boundaries of the waveguide core. The metal cladding layer is on at least a part of one boundary of the core. In some embodiments, the metal cladding is present on the waveguide core only along a section of core proximate to the resonator. The metal cladding causes the shape of the optical modes of the waveguide to be modified (see I. P. Kaminow et al, Metal-Clad Optical Waveguides: Analytical and Experimental Study, Applied Optics, Vol 13, page 396 (1974)), and can increase the strength of the electric field that is present on the opposite boundary of the dielectric core from the metal. When the metal cladding is placed on the boundary of the core opposite the resonator, this enhancement of the field strength allows the strength of coupling to the resonator to be increased over what can be achieved with a conventional dielectric cladding. Alternatively, the gap between the waveguide and resonator can be increased (to make the gap easier to fabricate) while maintaining adequate coupling.
Metals that achieve a significant shift of the mode to promote resonator coupling, but do not at the same time too strongly increase the loss of the waveguide are those that have a large value of the imaginary part of their refractive index “k” at the wavelength of operation. Examples of metals with large k values at visible and near infrared wavelengths are aluminum, gold, indium, silver, rhodium, sodium, iridium, magnesium, copper, rhenium, lead, molybdenum, platinum, zinc, nickel, strontium, niobium, tantalum, ytterbium, osmium, cobalt, iron, and vanadium.
This approach is primarily of benefit for the case of the transverse electric “TE” polarized fundamental mode, where the electric field is parallel to the metal surface. In the case of transverse magnetic “TM” polarized modes (where the electric field is perpendicular to the metal surface), the presence of the metal layer results in the fundamental mode being the “plasmon” mode where the electric field is concentrated near the metal surface, and is thus not available for coupling to a resonator positioned at the opposite side of the core from the metal. Enhanced coupling between higher-order TM modes and resonators can potentially be achieved, but generally the propagation loss of the higher order TM modes is higher than TE modes, and thus the use of this approach in device designs is less attractive.
First, we will describe examples of microresonator-waveguide systems generally and how they are used as sensors, in order to provide context for the discussion of the coupling systems. Then different configurations and embodiments of a metal clad waveguide optically coupled to a microresonator will be described, along with advantages of such systems. Finally, modeling and experimental results will be summarized.
An example of a microcavity-waveguide device 100 is schematically illustrated in
The light source 102 may be any suitable type of light source. For increased efficiency and sensitivity, it is advantageous that the light source produces light that is efficiently coupled into the waveguide 104, for example the light source may be a laser such as a laser diode, or may be a light emitting diode. It is often advantageous that the light source produce a narrow spectrum that is tunable, so the wavelength can be scanned to probe the resonances of the microcavity. The light source 102 generates light 108 at a desired wavelength, or wavelength range. For example, where the microresonator is used in a sensor, the light source 102 generates light at a wavelength that interacts with the species being sensed. The species being sensed is typically located in proximity to the surface of the microresonator 110 so that the light propagating in the resonator interacts with the species being sensed. The light source 102 may also comprise a lamp, along with suitable optics for coupling light from the lamp into the waveguide 104.
Description of Microcavity-Waveguide Systems used as Sensors
There are several approaches to using the microcavity-waveguide system as a sensor. The choice of approach is determined by a variety of considerations, including the chemistry of the analyte to be detected, the time available for detection, the sample preparation technology, etc.
In one approach, detection is based on monitoring the intensity or wavelength of the light 108 that travels from the microresonator 110 to the detector 106. This approach is based on the fact that when analyte molecules come in contact with the resonator surface and thus enter the evanescent field of the waveguide mode, they can alter the effective refractive index of the mode, and thus its equivalent path length. This results in a shift of the resonant frequency of the resonator. The shift in the resonant frequency can be detected either by scanning the input wavelength and monitoring the resulting intensity profile, or by holding the input wavelength constant (but near a resonance) and detecting the change in the intensity of light reaching the detector 106. This approach has the benefit of being “label free”, in that no taggant need be attached to the analyte in order to induce the signal change when the analyte is proximal to the resonator.
In an alternate approach when the device 100 is used as a fluorosensor, the light propagating within the microresonator 110 is absorbed by a fluorescent molecule, such as a fluorescent dye, that is in the proximity of the microresonator surface. This dye is associated with an analyte to serve as a marker that indicates the presence of the analyte. In a more specific example, the surface of the microresonator may be functionalized with antibodies specific to a desired analyte antigen. The analyte antigen molecules, conjugated with a fluorescent dye as part of the sample preparation step, are introduced to the sensor device 100. The antigen molecules bind to the antibody molecules on the microresonator 110, thus holding the fluorescent dye molecules sufficiently close to the microresonator 110 that the light circulating within microresonator 110 evanescently couples to the fluorescent molecules. The absorbed light excites the fluorescent molecules and the molecules subsequently fluoresce at a wavelength different from the excitation wavelength. Detection of the fluorescent light confirms the presence of the analyte antigen.
In another example of a fluorosensor, the analyte antigen molecules are not conjugated with a fluorescent dye, but are allowed to bind to the antibodies attached to the microresonator surface. More antibodies, conjugated to fluorescent molecules, are subsequently introduced to the sensor, and bind to the antigen. Again, the fluorescent molecules are excited by an evanescent interaction with the light propagating within the microresonator 110, and detection of the subsequent fluorescence may be used to determine the presence and abundance of the analyte antigen.
The light source 102 may direct light into a number of different waveguides, of which the waveguide 104 is one such example. According to the invention, a metal clad waveguide is used to couple light into the microresonator. In one embodiment, the waveguide 104 of
The detector unit 106 includes a light detector, for example a photodiode or photomultiplier, to detect light. The detector unit 106 may also include a wavelength sensitive device that selects the wavelength of light reaching the light detector. The wavelength selective device may be, for example, a filter, or a spectrometer. The wavelength selective device may be tunable so as to permit the user to actively change the wavelength of light incident on the light detector.
The microresonator 110 may be positioned either in physical contact with, or very close to, the waveguide 104 so that a portion of the light 108 propagating along the waveguide 104 is evanescently coupled into the microresonator 110.
Another type of microresonator device 150 is schematically illustrated in
Another type of microresonator device 170 is schematically illustrated in
Configuration Examples for Coupling a Metal Clad Waveguide to a Microresonator
There are many different examples of how a metal clad waveguide can be coupled to a microresonator resulting in a microresonator structure with an acceptable amount of optical loss and a simpler manufacturing process than many other waveguide types.
One example of such a coupling is illustrated in
In a variation of the above, the dielectric cladding layer may be omitted if the metal cladding will be present along the entire length of the waveguide. In that case, the metal would be deposited directly on the silicon wafer 310.
In one embodiment, the metallic layer is gold, with a thickness of 150 to 300 nanometers. In one embodiment, the width of the core ridge is about 4.6 μm. The thickness of the core layer may vary from 1 micron to 5 microns. Variations in the core layer thickness will achieve different coupling efficiencies, as will be demonstrated when simulation and experimental results are described below.
The channel waveguide structure 308 of
Some of the above issues related to coupling a microresonator to a waveguide can be overcome by abandoning the hybrid system based on the microsphere resonator, and using a fully-integrated system in which both the coupling waveguide(s) and the resonant cavity are fabricated via planar processing. In this case, the problems of the accuracy and stability of the positions of the waveguide and resonator are solved. However, it is still difficult to control coupling due to the small distance (approximately 100 to 300 nm) that the waveguide field projects outside the waveguide channel. The reason for the small extent of this “evanescent” field is the high index contrast required to achieve low loss in small resonators. As a result of the small extent of the evanescent field, good coupling between a waveguide and resonator necessitates that a very narrow gap be fabricated between them, generally less than 1 micron wide. Accurate and repeatable fabrication of such narrow gaps is very difficult, especially since the waveguide layers are typically several microns thick.
Examples will now be described where the entire microresonator-waveguide structure can be manufactured monolithically. This is possible when the resonant cavity is a disk or ring, or other resonant cavity based on a single mode channel or multimode planar waveguide rather than a sphere, so the microresonator and waveguide can be fabricated on the same planar substrate. This monolithic approach is typically realized in glass, polymer, or semiconductor waveguides, and provides excellent stability of coupling between the waveguides and the resonator. The etching processes used to fabricate the microresonator, however, invariably introduce surface roughness, that results in a scattering loss thereby degrading the Q of the cavity. Cavities formed using this approach typically have a Q-factor value of around a few thousand.
The example of
The microresonator typically has a diameter in the range from 10 μm to five millimeters, but is more often in the range 10 μm-500 μm. The microresonator may be a ring resonator, a sphere resonator, a toroidal resonator, a disk resonator, a racetrack resonator, a rectangular resonator, a polygonal shape resonator, or a Fabry-Perot cavity resonator. A common diameter for a microsphere resonator is 300 μm, whereas resonators made by planar fabrication technologies can be made much smaller.
In some embodiments, the surface of the microresonator is modified for greater surface sensitivity. For example, commonly-owned U.S. Publication No. 2005/0078731 describes porous microsphere resonators that increase the amount of material that can be introduced to the surface of a microresonator that has whispering gallery modes.
General Waveguide Features
The waveguide is often tapered to increase the intensity of the optical field outside the waveguide, thus increasing the amount of light that couples into the microresonator. In the case of an optical fiber waveguide, the fiber may be heated and tapered by stretching, or may be chemically etched to a total thickness of about 1-5 μm. Likewise, with a planar or channel waveguide, the waveguide core thickness or width may be reduced at the region where the light is coupled to the microresonator. In addition to the waveguide being reduced in size, the thickness of the cladding around the waveguide may also be reduced.
A stable relative position between the microresonator and a waveguide taper can be difficult to achieve. Various approaches to establishing stable relative positions of the microresonator and the waveguide are discussed in greater detail in commonly owned and co-pending U.S. Published Patent Application No. 2005/0077513, incorporated herein by reference.
Where a waveguide includes a core ridge, there are many options for positioning a metal cladding layer relative to the core ridge. In one embodiment, the metal coating is located beneath the core ridge. In another embodiment, the metal cladding layer is beneath at least a part of the core ridge. In yet another embodiment, the metal cladding layer is on at least a part of the side of the core ridge.
In one embodiment, the waveguide core includes one or more of the following materials: silica, silicon, silicon nitride, silicon oxynitride, titania, zirconia, Group III-V compound semiconductor, Group II-VI compound semiconductor, and polymer. The silica material can have a dopant, such as germanium, phosphorous, or titanium in the silica.
The metal layer may be any metal which acts as a good reflector in the optical frequency range in which the device is to be operated. That is, the imaginary part of the refractive index should be large, typically greater than 5. However, in order to further achieve low propagation loss, high magnitudes of the ratio of the imaginary part of the refractive index to the real part of the refractive index are desirable, generally such that k/n is greater than 5.
Table I provides values for optical constants n and k for several metals, measured at a wavelength of either 633 nm or 1550 nm, or both. Table I also shows the ratio k/n for some metals. In addition, Table I shows the skin depth for each metal at 1550 nm. The skin depth is calculated as follows:
Metals which are acceptable for the cladding layer include aluminum, gold, indium, silver, rhodium, sodium, iridium, magnesium, copper, rhenium, lead, molybdenum, platinum, zinc, nickel, strontium, niobium, tantalum, ytterbium, osmium, cobalt, iron, vanadium and alloys of these elements. Gold, silver, aluminum, copper, and alloys thereof are particularly useful as metal cladding layers at 1550 nm wavelength, due to the lower loss of waveguides based on them.
These metals are selected to balance the field enhancement benefits against the optical loss. The total optical loss to the microresonator device caused by the addition of the metal cladding will depend on how long a region of the waveguide is coated with metal for coupling, which depends in turn on the size of the resonator. The coupling region will range from 10 to 100 microns in length in many embodiments. Choosing the longest value, 100 microns, to estimate a minimum for the attenuation/mm, it is reasonable to define “low loss” as less than 10 dB/mm. Essentially any of the metals listed herein will work if loss of 100 dB/mm is acceptable, corresponding to 1 dB in a 10 micron length. To some degree, the definition of low loss and acceptable loss is arbitrary, because the amount of loss that can be tolerated is a system level issue that depends on how much power is available, how strong the signal is, noise sources, and other factors.
Of course, the field enhancement and attenuation are wavelength dependent, so the choice of metal will depend on the operating wavelength. Based on calculations, the following trends emerge:
These principles can be applied to commonly used wavelengths of interest: 1550 nm and 633 nm. The list of metals that will provide good field enhancement at an operation wavelength of 1550 nm is as follows: aluminum, gold, indium, silver, rhodium, sodium, iridium, magnesium, copper, rhenium, lead, molybdenum, platinum, zinc, nickel, strontium, niobium, tantalum, ytterbium, osmium, cobalt, iron, and vanadium. For loss <10 dB/mm, the list becomes: gold, silver, aluminum, sodium and copper. Obviously, for chemistry reasons, sodium would not be easy to use. At an operating wavelength of 633 nm, the list of metals that will provide good field enhancement is aluminum and rhodium. Of those, only aluminum also gives loss less than 10 dB/mm.
In some embodiments, the metal cladding layer is patterned. In some embodiments, the dielectric cladding layer is patterned. The thickness requirement on the metal layer is determined by the depth of the electric field penetration into the metal, described by the skin depth (1/e decay length for the electric field). For optimal performance in metal clad waveguides where the intent is to enhance coupling, the metal should be thick enough that no significant electric field penetrates to the side of the metal opposite the core. At an operating wavelength of 1550 nm, the skin depths for typical metals are between 20 and 50 nm. In order to limit the optical mode to one side of the metal, a thickness exceeding about two skin depths is desirable. Therefore, depending upon the properties of the metal, a minimum thickness between 40 and 100 nm is appropriate. Note however that beyond exceeding the minimum thickness, control of the exact thickness of the metal is not required. Where the thickness of the metal is at least greater than twice the skin depth at the wavelength of operation, the result is that less than 2% of the optical power is on the wrong side of the metal, opposite the core.
A graded transition on a substrate is present in some embodiments between a conventional waveguide and the metal clad waveguide. The metal clad waveguide in one example is an optical fiber taper with a metal cladding layer on one side of the taper.
Method of Assembling a Coupling of a Channel Waveguide to a Microresonator
As mentioned previously, there are two primary categories of methods for assembling a coupling of a metal clad channel waveguide to a microresonator: hybrid and monolithic. In both approaches, a first substrate is provided, on which is fabricated a waveguide, where the waveguide comprises a core and a metal cladding layer on at least a portion of one side. Then a microresonator is positioned so that the microresonator is in an optically coupling relationship with the waveguide. The two options are that the waveguide and resonator are fabricated as a monolithic integrated optical circuit, or the waveguide and resonator are fabricated separately and are then assembled as a hybrid optical circuit.
Advantages of Metal Clad Waveguides Over ARROW Structures
Non-fiber wave guides, such as integrated optical channel waveguides, have not found general use with microsphere resonators because of the difficulty in making the optical field available outside of the waveguide sufficiently large to obtain adequate coupling of the light into the microsphere. One example of channel waveguide structure that has been used with microspheres is known as the Anti-Resonant Reflecting Optical Waveguide (ARROW). A more specific type of ARROW is a Stripline Pedestal Anti-Resonant Reflecting Optical Waveguide (SPARROW). ARROW structures optically isolate the waveguide core from the substrate with a high-reflectivity stack of alternating high- and low-index layers of materials, such as Si and SiO2, the thicknesses of which are defined as a quarter of the vertically directed guide wavelength. An early document describing ARROW structures is U.S. Pat. No. 4,715,672 to Duguay et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,657,731 to Tapalian et al describes the use of SPARROW waveguides for coupling light into a microresonator in a chemical sensor. A disadvantage of ARROW structures is that they include multiple layers requiring thickness control during fabrication, and are therefore quite time consuming and complex to manufacture.
A metal-clad waveguide is very simple to manufacture compared to an ARROW structure. Rather than growing multiple layers of alternating high and low index material, a simple single layer of metal may be used according to the present invention. In addition, ARROW structures require fairly accurate control of the reflector layer thickness, while the metal cladding layer of the present invention only need be thicker than some minimum value without adversely affecting the performance of the structure.
It is very difficult to make a graded on-chip transition between a conventional waveguide and a ARROW. However, because of the smaller thickness of the metal layer, it is easier to make a graded on-chip transition between a conventional waveguide and a metal clad waveguide. It is also easier to apply a metal coating on the side of a ridge waveguide than it is to deposit a multilayer reflector there, in order to enhance lateral coupling, as shown in
Modeling and Experimental Results
A series of modeling experiments were performed to determine the typical characteristics of a metal clad waveguide. To this end, an analytical approach was used as well as commercially available Beam Propagation Method (BPM) software to solve for effective modal indices, field amplitudes, and propagation losses for various metal clad waveguide structures. Specifically, BeamPROP™ software was used as the BPM software, which is available from RSoft Design Group, Inc. of Ossining, N.Y.
One goal of the modeling experiments was to determine the fraction of the waveguide electric field amplitude outside of the core on the side where the resonator is positioned. It is believed that this value is important because it is related to the strength of coupling between the waveguide mode and resonator modes. The Relative Field Increase is defined as the ratio of this integrated amplitude for the specified construction to that for a reference construction.
The analytical approach was used to look for general trends by studying the characteristics of a metal-clad slab waveguide structure (see Kaminow et al, Metal-Clad Optical Waveguides Analytical and Experimental Study, Applied Optics v 13, p 396 (1974)). The structure consisted of three layers: an infinitely thick metal layer; a 1 micron thick core layer with a refractive index of 1.5; and an infinitely thick top dielectric cladding layer with a refractive index of 1.33. The reference construction was identical except for a 1.45 index layer in place of the metal layer. The Relative Field Increase in the top cladding layer and the calculated attenuation for wavelengths of 633 nm and 1550 nm are shown in
Numerical modeling using beam propagation software was done to assess the benefits of the metal cladding in realistic channel waveguide configurations (as opposed to the slab waveguide configurations for which the analyses are easily performed analytically).
The channel waveguide structure included a core 1502, and the core had a width and height of 1.5 and 2 microns, respectively, and the index of refraction was 1.53. The starting refractive index and thickness for the metal layer 1504 was 0.56+i11.5 and 200 nm, respectively. From this starting point, the thickness and imaginary index of the metal was varied to look for dependencies. The core 1502 sits upon a silica substrate 1510, having an index of 1.45. An upper cladding 1508 is water with an index of refraction of 1.33. The Relative Field Increase was measured in the right clad region 1506. For all cases, the wavelength was 1550 nm. The reference construction for the Relative Field Increase calculation is the case with no metal. As a result, the index of what would be the metal region in the other models is 1.33 for the reference constructon.
With the metal clad structure of
Experiments were carried out to determine the observed Q-factors of microresonators coupled to a metal-clad waveguide. The observed quality factor is defined by Qobs=2πυ0τ where υ0 is the resonant frequency and 1/τ is the cavity decay rate for a particular mode. It is determined experimentally using the relation
The example tested was that of
This result confirms that microresonators with high Q-factors can be effectively coupled to a metal-clad waveguide.
In a different experiment, the core thickness was 2.5 microns thick. The Q-factor of the microresonator system was approximately 3×106 and coupling efficiency was 78%. Another experiment was performed where the core thickness was 3 microns thick. The Q-factor of the microresonator system was approximately 1.5×106 and coupling efficiency was nearly 60%. In another experiment, the core thickness was 4 microns thick. The Q-factor of the microresonator system was approximately 5×106 and coupling efficiency was 30%.
During these experiments, it was found that the light attenuation or loss in the gold-clad waveguide coupled with the microsphere resonator was comparable to that of ARROW-structured waveguides. In addition, it was found that the gold-clad waveguide transmits only TE polarized light.
As noted above, the present invention is applicable to microresonators, and is believed to be particularly useful where microresonators are used in sensing applications. The present invention should not be considered limited to the particular examples described above, but rather should be understood to cover all aspects of the invention as fairly set out in the attached claims. Various modifications, equivalent processes, as well as numerous structures to which the present invention may be applicable will be readily apparent to those of skill in the art to which the present invention is directed upon review of the present specification. The claims are intended to cover such modifications and devices.
The above specification provides a complete description of the structure and use of the invention. Since many of the embodiments of the invention can be made without parting from the spirit and scope of the invention, the invention resides in the claims.