Sensitive label-free and compact ultrasonic sensor based on double silicon-on-insulator slot micro-ring resonators

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel all-optical ultrasonic sensor using double silicon-on-insulator slot micro-ring resonators, achieving higher sensitivity and broader frequency range than traditional piezoelectric sensors.

Contribution

The work presents a new label-free ultrasonic sensor design with optimized SDMR resonators, demonstrating significantly improved sensitivity and frequency range through numerical simulations.

Findings

Sensitivity of 2453.7 mV/kPa at 1-150 MHz

36 times higher sensitivity than single slot micro-ring sensors

Potential for ultra-high Q factor and large frequency range in photo-acoustic microscopy

Abstract

We propose a new label-free ultrasonic sensor, which comprises a slot wave-guide and double silicon-on-insulator (SOI) slot micro-ring resonators. The all-optical sensors do not suffer from electromagnetic interference. We choose to integrate a silicon slot double micro-ring (SDMR) resonators in an acoustically resonant membrane. Optimization of the several key structural parameters is investigated to achieve the mode-field distributions of transmission spectrum based on Comsol Multiphysics software. Our numerical studies show that the proposed ultrasonic sensor offers higher sensitivity and a larger detection frequency range than conventional piezoelectric based ultrasound transducer. For a SDMR system with an area of 15um*30um, sensitivity as high as 2453.7mv/kpa, and over a bandwidth range of 1-150MHz. The sensitivity value is 36 times higher than that of single slot micro-ring ultrasonic sensor. The theoretical-factor of the SDMR can be approximately 1.24*10^6 with bending radius of 5um. The investigation on the SDMR system is a valuable exploration of the photo-acoustic microscopy for the ultra-high Q factor and large frequency range.