An Optimization Framework for Silicon Photonic Evanescent-Field Biosensors Using Sub-Wavelength Gratings

Silicon photonic (SiP) evanescent-field biosensors aim to combine the information-rich readouts offered by lab-scale diagnostics, at a significantly lower cost, and with the portability and rapid time to result offered by paper-based assays. While SiP biosensors fabricated with conventional strip waveguides can offer good sensitivity for label-free detection in some applications, there is still opportunity for improvement. Efforts have been made to design higher-sensitivity SiP sensors with alternative waveguide geometries, including sub-wavelength gratings (SWGs). However, SWG-based devices are fragile and prone to damage, limiting their suitability for scalable and portable sensing. Here, we investigate SiP microring resonator sensors designed with SWG waveguides that contain a “fishbone” and highlight the improved robustness offered by this design. We present a framework for optimizing fishbone-style SWG waveguide geometries based on numerical simulations, then experimentally measure the performance of ring resonator sensors fabricated with the optimized waveguides, targeting operation in the O-band and C-band. For the O-band and C-band devices, we report bulk sensitivities up to 349 nm/RIU and 438 nm/RIU, respectively, and intrinsic limits of detection as low as 5.1 × 10−4 RIU and 7.1 × 10−4 RIU, respectively. This performance is comparable to the state of the art in SWG-based sensors, positioning fishbone SWG resonators as an attractive, more robust, alternative to conventional SWG designs.