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Design and analysis of optical ring

resonator for bio-sensing application

Shwetha M., Sampritha Niranjan Swamy, Vijeth M.

Sarashetti, Narayan K.

Shwetha M., Sampritha Niranjan Swamy, Vijeth M. Sarashetti, Narayan K.,

"Design and analysis of optical ring resonator for bio-sensing application ,"
Proc. SPIE 10875, Microfluidics, BioMEMS, and Medical Microsystems XVII,
108750W (4 March 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2510201

Event: SPIE BiOS, 2019, San Francisco, California, United States

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 Design and analysis of optical ring resonator for bio-sensing
application
Shwetha M*a, Sampritha Niranjan Swamyb, Vijeth M Sarashettib, Narayan Ka
a
Dept. of ECE, Sai Vidya Institute of Technology, Bengaluru, India 560 064; bDept. of CSE, Sai
Vidya Institute of Technology, Bengaluru, India 560 064

ABSTRACT

In this work, a ring resonator is designed and analyzed for the spectral properties. A ring and a bus waveguide is
designed with a core width of 0.2µm and cladding width of 2µm respectively. The bus waveguide is designed with a
height of 14.4µ, width of 2µm and a layer thickness of 900nm is considered. The structure is simulated with a
wavelength of 1.55µm. The core refractive index of 2.5 and the cladding refractive index of 1.5 is considered in the
design. The separation between the ring and bus waveguide considered in the design is 0.72µm. A perfect electric
conductor is considered at the boundaries of the ring and the bus waveguide. The meshing of the structure is done, which
involves the finite element method (FEM). The power at the input port is given as 1W. The coupling of the light in the
core of the bus and ring waveguide is observed. Which will give a better limit of detection, and is required for biosensor.
An increase in the transmittance is observed by reducing the radius of the ring, various ring circumference is considered
for the analysis. A small ring structure is taken for consideration, as the smaller ring will be useful in the bio-sensing
application, which can further be fabricated for a point of care devices.

Keywords: ring resonator, waveguides, transmittance, bio-sensing,

INTRODUCTION
Integrated optical ring resonators are of great interest due to their versatile functionalities and compactness. Integrated
optical devices allow integration of passive and active optical components onto the same substrate1. The optical micro
ring resonator allows development of compact sensing components on the device along with placement of multiple
sensors on a single chip. In ring resonator, phase changes in an integer multiple of 2π after each trip around the ring.
During resonant condition, part of light will be transmitted through the bus waveguide. The resonance wavelength of a
ring resonator as a function of ring radius will be calculated using the FDTD technique2-4.
In the optical ring resonator, to measure the optical signals, the ring resonator sensor relies on a light-analyte interaction
to convert the presence of chemical or biological analytes. Sensing can be performed in two ways depending on where
the sensing signal originates. In surface sensing, signals come from analytes in close proximity to the ring resonator
surface5. Where as in bulk sensing, signals result from the optical change induced by the presence of the analytes in the
region of the evanescent field. In ring resonator, light intensity is proportional to the quality(Q) factor. The Q factor is
related to the circulating nature of the resonant light, and is useful in sensing application6.

1.1 Biosensor
The operating principle of the biosensors with its main component is shown in figure 1. The target molecules present in
the sample will bind to the receptors on the optical device (i.e., ring in ring resonator) and increase the effective index of
the optical mode in the ring waveguide7. The bio-receptors or molecular recognizer enters the optical device and the
sensing takes place with the designed structure and conversion takes place according to chemical or biological sensing.

Sample Bio-receptors or Signal Signal Conditioning Electrical

Analyte Molecular Recognizer Transducer Circuits Signal

Figure 1. Operating principle of biosensors with the main components of a biosensor.

Microfluidics, BioMEMS, and Medical Microsystems XVII, edited by Bonnie L. Gray, Holger Becker, Proc. of
SPIE Vol. 10875, 108750W · © 2019 SPIE · CCC code: 1605-7422/19/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.2510201

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 10875 108750W-1

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 2. THEORY AND DESIGN
The geometry of the micro-ring resonator is shown in figure 2. The structure consists of a ring and the bus waveguide.
The simulations of ring resonators have been done using COMSOL Multiphysics.

(a) (b)
Figure 2. Geometry of ring resonator structure with radius of (a) 9.3µm (b) 6.2µm.
The waveguide cores are placed close to each other and light waves are coupled from one waveguide to the other.
The Electromagnetic Waves, Beam Envelopes is considered in the design, in which the interface is based on the beam
envelope method, a numerical method is used to analyze the slowly varying electric field envelope for an optically
large simulation. When compared to traditional optical analysis methods, the beam envelope method doesn’t require a
fine mesh to resolve the propagating waves8. This makes it a computationally efficient option. The boundary
condition considered in the design makes it such that the electric and magnetic fields have continuous tangential
components at the boundary. To calculate the spectral properties of the model, boundary-mode analyses and a
frequency-domain study are simulated using the specialized modeling features of wave optics in COMSOL. Table 1
shows the parameters that are considered in designing the structure.
The electric field of the wave can be written as,
E=E1exp(-jϕ) (1)
where E1 is a slowly varying field envelope function and ϕ is an approximation of the propagation phase for the wave.
The resonant wavelength λ is given by,

2πrneff
λ= (2)
m
where r is the resonator radius, neff is the effective refractive index experienced by the optical resonant mode, and m is an
integer number.
Table 1. Parameters in the design modeling.

Parameters Value
Wavelength 1550nm
Core Refractive index 2.5
Cladding Refractive index 1.5
Core Width 0.2µm
Cladding Width 2µm

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 Integrated optical sensors adopt a waveguide to confine optical power and are based on evanescent field sensing.
Although light is confined within the guiding region, there is a part of the propagating light that travels through a
region extending outside, into the medium surrounding the waveguide, and can interact with the environment. This
kind of optical sensors exhibits very interesting advantages with respect to other optical sensors, such as
compactness, very high sensitivity and possibility of mass production.

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

As discussed in section 2, the parameters in table 1 are considered in the simulation using COMSOL. Where the ring
resonator structure is analyzed for the spectral property such as transmittance for the various ring radius. Figure 3 shows
the simulation of the ring resonator structure and the transmittance for the ring radius of 9.3µm.

(a) (b)

Figure 3. (a) Electric field of ring resonator with 9.3µm radius; (b) Transmittance spectrum for the optical ring resonator.

In order to obtain a better sensing performance the ring radius is further reduced and observed the transmittance
spectrum, where the ring radius of 6.2µm is considered and is shown in figure 4. It can also observed from the figure the
transmittance spectrum is also varied for the reduced radius, which is better useful in bio-sensing application.

(a) (b)

Figure 4. (a) Electric field of ring resonator with 6.2µm radius; (b) Transmittance spectrum for the optical ring resonator.

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 It is observed from the spectral property of the ring resonator that the transmittance at the 6.2µm radius has the
transmittance at 1560nm, which is better useful in bio-sensing application. And also if the analyte is placed in the
surrounding medium, then the phase shift in the transmittance can be observed, which says that the ring resonator acts as
a sensor for the bio-sensing application. The designed ring resonator structure is analyzed using the beam envelope
method as the meshing consideration is not an issue. Which is one of the important parameter in the sensing application.
By placing a outer medium of any layer in the integrated device with various refractive index, the diagnosis and the
prognosis of the disease can be identified. Where the phase shift in the intensity of the device with respect to the
wavelength will be observed, where the infected cells or the enzymes can be monitored and later the label free sensing
can be performed for the designed integrated device for point of care application.

4. CONCLUSION
In this work, the ring resonator structure with a ring and a bus waveguide is designed and analyzed for the transmittance
spectral property. It is observed that the smaller ring radius gives better performance for the bio-sensing application. And
hence it can be further developed for point of care devices.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work is supported by Vision Group on Science and Technology, Department of IT, BT & ST, Government of
Karnataka, India. Grant number: VGST - CISEE GRD – 466.

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