Scatterer induced mode splitting in poly(dimethylsiloxane) coated microresonators

TL;DR

This paper studies how scatterers cause mode splitting in polymer-coated microresonators, demonstrating a temperature-robust sensing scheme leveraging polymer materials' properties.

Contribution

It introduces a self-referencing mode splitting technique in polymer-coated microresonators that is insensitive to temperature variations.

Findings

Mode splitting responds similarly in coated and uncoated microtoroids to temperature changes.

The proposed scheme offers a temperature-robust sensing platform.

Polymer coatings enable versatile functionalities for microresonator sensors.

Abstract

We investigate scatterer induced mode splitting in a composite microtoroidal resonator (Q ~ 10^6) fabricated by coating a silica microtoroid (Q ~ 10^7) with a thin poly(dimethylsiloxane) layer. We show that the two split modes in both coated and uncoated silica microtoroids respond in the same way to the changes in the environmental temperature. This provides a self-referencing scheme which is robust to temperature perturbations. Together with the versatile functionalities of polymer materials, mode splitting in polymer and polymer coated microresonators offers an attractive sensing platform that is robust to thermal noise.