Open AccessEnhanced pH sensitivity in photoluminescence of GaInAsP semiconductor photonic crystal slab
Author(s) -
Keisuke Watanabe,
Toshihiko Baba
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.27.024978
Subject(s) - materials science , optoelectronics , photonic crystal , semiconductor , sensitivity (control systems) , electric field , photodiode , photoluminescence , photonics , optics , signal (programming language) , ion , chemistry , electronic engineering , physics , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics , computer science , engineering , programming language
Semiconductor ion sensors that respond to the surface electric charge in a solution are used for chemical and biological sensing. Photonic sensors exploiting such a response in the photoluminescence intensity enable a simple system consisting only of a photopump source and a photodiode; however, their sensitivity is usually lower than that of electric sensors, such as ion-sensitive field-effect transistors. This study employed a GaInAsP semiconductor honeycomb photonic crystal slab as a photonic sensor structure and obtained a high ion sensitivity. The surface recombination, which is the origin of the ion sensitivity, was enhanced by increasing the surface-to-volume ratio and moderately suppressing the photopump level. Nevertheless, a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio was maintained by improving the light extraction efficiency. Moreover, a high pH sensitivity of 0.27 dB/pH, which is six times that without photonic crystals, was obtained and resulted in a pH resolution of 0.011 at pH ∼7 comparable with that of electric sensors.