High-Q silk fibroin whispering gallery microresonator

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a high-Q silk fibroin whispering gallery microresonator with enhanced thermal sensing capabilities, enabling biodegradable biophotonics applications on flexible chips.

Contribution

It introduces a simple fabrication method for on-chip silk fibroin microresonators with high quality factors and high sensitivity for thermal sensing.

Findings

Quality factor up to 10^5 achieved.

Thermal sensitivity of 1.17 nm/K demonstrated.

Potential for biodegradable biophotonics applications.

Abstract

We have experimentally demonstrated an on-chip all-silk fibroin whispering gallery mode microresonator by using a simple molding and solution-casting technique. The quality factors of the fabricated silk protein microresonators are up to 10^5. A high-sensitivity thermal sensor was realized in this silk fibroin microtoroid with sensitivity of 1.17 nm/K, 8 times higher than previous WGM resonator based thermal sensors. This opens the way to fabricate biodegradable and biocompatible protein based microresonators on a flexible chip for biophotonics applications.