Biosensors and Bioelectronics

Photonic Sensor Technologies

Photonic Sensing focuses on experimental contributions related to novel principles, and structures or materials for photonic sensors. Optical fibres can be used as sensors to measure strain, temperature, pressure and other quantities by modifying a fiber so that the quantity to be measured modulates the intensity, phase, polarization and wavelength or transit time of light in the fiber. Sensors that vary the intensity of light are the simplest, since only a simple source and detector are required. A particularly useful feature of intrinsic optical fibre sensors is that they can, if required, provide distributed sensing over very large distances. Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are optically active integrated semiconductor photonic devices which consist of at least two different functional blocks, (gain region and a grating based mirror in a laser...). These devices are responsible for commercial successes of optical communications and the ability to increase the available bandwidth without significant cost increases to the end user, through improved performance and cost reduction that they provide. The most widely deployed PICs are based on Indium phosphide material system. Silicon photonics is an active area of research.