Abstract

We demonstrate a temperature-insensitive waveguide sensor based on a silicon-on-insulator platform. The sensor consists of a ring resonator and a Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI). A free spectral range of the sensing ring is designed to be slightly different from that of the MZI; hence, the Vernier effect can be employed to improve sensitivity. By optimizing structural parameters of the MZI, the envelope peak position of a cascaded transmission spectrum can be immune to the temperature variation, and only dependent on analyte change in the sensing area. The experimental results show that bulk refractive index (RI) sensitivity of the proposed sensor is 3552 nm/RI unit, while its temperature sensitivity is less than 4 pm/K, which is two orders of magnitude smaller than the conventional cascaded sensor structure without temperature compensation. The proposed temperature-insensitive waveguide sensor does not need polymer cladding or extra thermal stabilization, making it more robust in practical applications.

© 2019 Optical Society of America

Ultra-sensitive silicon temperature sensor based on cascaded Mach–Zehnder interferometers

Zuoqin Ding, Daoxin Dai, and Yaocheng Shi
Opt. Lett. 46(11) 2787-2790 (2021)

Temperature-insensitive Mach–Zehnder interferometer based on a silicon nitride waveguide platform

Liwei Tang, Yu Li, Jiachen Li, Sigang Yang, Hongwei Chen, and Minghua Chen
Opt. Lett. 45(10) 2780-2783 (2020)

Ultra-compact and temperature-insensitive Mach–Zehnder interferometer based on one multimode waveguide on silicon

Huizhan Yang, Jianhao Zhang, Yuntao Zhu, Xuan Zhou, Sailing He, and Liu Liu
Opt. Lett. 42(3) 615-618 (2017)

High-sensitivity optical biosensor based on cascaded Mach–Zehnder interferometer and ring resonator using Vernier effect

Xianxin Jiang, Yangqing Chen, Fang Yu, Longhua Tang, Mingyu Li, and Jian-Jun He
Opt. Lett. 39(22) 6363-6366 (2014)

Compact multimode waveguide based temperature-insensitive Mach-Zehnder interferometer

Yingxuan Zhao, Chao Qiu, Aimin Wu, Yang Li, Lue Tao, Zhen Sheng, Wei Li, Xi Wang, and Fuwan Gan
Opt. Express 27(15) 20373-20382 (2019)