Photonic crystals enable infrared gas

Sensors of trace gases are of enormous importance to diverse fields such as environmental protection, household safety, homeland security, bio-hazardous material identification, meteorology and industrial environments. The gases of interest include CO for home environments, CO2 for industrial and environment applications and toxic effluents such as SO2, CH4, NO for various manufacturing environments. We propose a new class of IR gas sensors, where the enabling technology is a spectrally tuned metallo-dielectric photonic crystal. Building both the emitting and sensing capabilities on to a single discrete element, Ion Optics' infrared sensorchip brings together a new sensor paradigm to vital commercial applications. Our design exploits Si-based suspended micro-bridge structures fabricated using conventional photolithographic processes. Spectral tuning, control of bandwidth and direction of emission were accomplished by specially designed metallo-dielectric photonic crystal surfaces.