Theoretical and experimental study of nanoporous silicon photonic microcavity optical sensor devices

P N Patel, Vivekanand Mishra and A K Panchal

Abstract

This paper reports the theoretical and experimental study of one-dimensional (1D) multilayer nanoporous silicon (NPS) photonic band gap (PBG) microcavity (MC) structures for optical sensor device applications. A theoretical framework to model the reflectance spectra relying on the Bruggeman's effective medium approximation (BEMA) and the transfer matrix method (TMM) was established for the 1D nanoporous silicon microcavity (1D-NPSMC) optical sensor device structures. Based on the theoretical background, 1D-NPSMC sensor device structures were fabricated using electrochemical dissolution of silicon wafer in hydrofluoric (HF) acid. The refractive index of the 1D-NPSMC structures was tuned by changing current density and the thickness was tuned by changing the etching time. Wavelength shifts (Δλ) in the measured reflectance spectra were analyzed for the detection of the analyte in the porous structure. The sensing device performance was tested by different organic solvents, which showed good linear relation between the refractive index of analyte inside the pores and the wavelength shift. The application of proposed structures can be extended for the optical sensing of chemicals, gas, environmental pollutants, pathogens etc