Densely folded silicon photonic wire biosensors in ring resonator and Mach-Zehnder configurations

We demonstrate silicon photonic wire evanescent field sensors formed by folding long photonic wire waveguides into dense spiral paths that occupy spot sizes less than 150 mum in diameter, and are hence suitable for biochip array formats. These sensors are incorporated into both ring resonator and Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) interrogation circuits, and tested by monitoring streptavidin protein adsorption. The level of detection is less than 1% of a monolayer in either configuration. Using a balanced MZI design, we show that the sensors can be insensitive to temperature and wavelength, while retaining a very high sensitivity to molecular adsorption.