69,721 research outputs found
Earth feature identification for onboard multispectral data editing: Computational experiments
A computational model of the processes involved in multispectral remote sensing and data classification is developed as a tool for designing smart sensors which can process, edit, and classify the data that they acquire. An evaluation of sensor system performance and design tradeoffs involves classification rates and errors as a function of number and location of spectral channels, radiometric sensitivity and calibration accuracy, target discrimination assignments, and accuracy and frequency of compensation for imaging conditions. This model provides a link between the radiometric and statistical properties of the signals to be classified and the performance characteristics of electro-optical sensors and data processing devices. Preliminary computational results are presented which illustrate the editing performance of several remote sensing approaches
On-chip infrared sensors: redefining the benefits of scaling
Infrared (IR) spectroscopy is widely recognized as a gold standard technique for chemical and biological analysis. Traditional IR spectroscopy relies on fragile bench-top instruments located in dedicated laboratory settings, and is thus not suitable for emerging field-deployed applications such as in-line industrial process control, environmental monitoring, and point-of-care diagnosis. Recent strides in photonic integration technologies provide a promising route towards enabling miniaturized, rugged platforms for IR spectroscopic analysis. It is therefore attempting to simply replace the bulky discrete optical elements used in conventional IR spectroscopy with their on-chip counterparts. This size down-scaling approach, however, cripples the system performance as both the sensitivity of spectroscopic sensors and spectral resolution of spectrometers scale with optical path length. In light of this challenge, we will discuss two novel photonic device designs uniquely capable of reaping performance benefits from microphotonic scaling. We leverage strong optical and thermal confinement in judiciously designed micro-cavities to circumvent the thermal diffusion and optical diffraction limits in conventional photothermal sensors and achieve a record 104 photothermal sensitivity enhancement. In the second example, an on-chip spectrometer design with the Fellgett's advantage is analyzed. The design enables sub-nm spectral resolution on a millimeter-sized, fully packaged chip without moving parts.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award 1506605)United States. Department of Energy (Grant DE-NA0002509
Topological engineering of interfacial optical Tamm states for highly-sensitive near-singular-phase optical detection
We developed planar multilayered photonic-plasmonic structures, which support
topologically protected optical states on the interface between metal and
dielectric materials, known as optical Tamm states. Coupling of incident light
to the Tamm states can result in perfect absorption within one of several
narrow frequency bands, which is accompanied by a singular behavior of the
phase of electromagnetic field. In the case of near-perfect absorptance, very
fast local variation of the phase can still be engineered. In this work, we
theoretically and experimentally demonstrate how these drastic phase changes
can improve sensitivity of optical sensors. A planar Tamm absorber was
fabricated and used to demonstrate remote near-singular-phase temperature
sensing with an over an order of magnitude improvement in sensor sensitivity
and over two orders of magnitude improvement in the figure of merit over the
standard approach of measuring shifts of resonant features in the reflectance
spectra of the same absorber. Our experimentally demonstrated
phase-to-amplitude detection sensitivity improvement nearly doubles that of
state-of-the-art nano-patterned plasmonic singular-phase detectors, with
further improvements possible via more precise fabrication. Tamm perfect
absorbers form the basis for robust planar sensing platforms with tunable
spectral characteristics, which do not rely on low-throughput nano-patterning
techniques.Comment: 31 pages; 6 main text figures and 10 supplementary figure
Comparison between Vernier-cascade and MZI as transducer for biosensing with on-chip spectral filter
The Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and the Vernier-cascade are highly responsive photonic sensors with large design freedom. They are therefore very suitable for interrogation through a broadband source and an on-chip spectral filter, a sensing scheme that is well equipped for point-of-care applications. In this work, the MZI is shown to outperform the Vernier-cascade through a better minimum detectable wavelength shift as well as a higher power efficiency, indicating its superiority in this sensing scheme. Fabricated MZIs yield bulk detection limits down to 8.8 x 10(-7) refractive index units (RIU) in a point-of-care compatible measuring setup, indicating the potential of the proposed sensing scheme
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