Real-Time Stability Monitoring of Photonic Crystal Sensing System Based on Guided-Mode Resonance Effect

The detection limit of antibody content has reached level of nanograms per milliliter due to high sensitivity and extremely narrow band of photonic crystal (PC) filter. The PC filter based on guided-mode resonance (GMR) effect can also be applied to detecting the molecular interactions. As the transducing element, one-dimensional PC filters transform biological information to photoelectric signal on optical spectrum analyzer (OSA). The main sensing performance is the change of peak-wavelength of PC filter. The sensing system using PC filter is restricted to the system stability which determines the effectiveness of detecting data. So in this paper, a detecting system we designed is briefly addressed. The morphology and the spectrum of PC filter we fabricated are tested. Considering the coupling light loss and integration of the system, noise signal in spectrum is going to affect the detecting results. To monitor the influence, realization of real-time monitoring the changes of the peak wavelength of PC filter is mainly illustrated. The monitoring is realized by transferring detecting data to computer in time and the results can represent the stability of the system. The program is compiled by Lab VIEW. In our experiment, the shift of 0. 25 nm of the peak wavelength caused by vibration of platform or unsteadiness of light source is within the sensitivity of the PC filter obtained by simulation, so we proposed this system we mentioned can be used in sensing most kind of bulk reagents.