| AVS 64th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Nanometer-scale Science and Technology Division | Tuesday Sessions |
| Session NS+EM+MN+PS+SS-TuA |
| Session: | Nano-Photonics, Plasmonics and Mechanics |
| Presenter: | Nikolai Klimov, National Institute of Standards and Technology |
| Authors: | N.N. Klimov, National Institute of Standards and Technology T. Herman, National Institute of Standards and Technology K.O. Douglass, National Institute of Standards and Technology M.J. Chojnacky, National Institute of Standards and Technology Z. Ahmed, National Institute of Standards and Technology |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Temperature measurements play a crucial role in various aspects of modern technology ranging from medicine and manufacturing process control, to environmental and oil-and-gas industry. Among various temperature measurement solutions, resistance-based thermometry is a time-tested method of disseminating temperature standards [1]. Although industrial resistance thermometers can routinely measure temperatures with uncertainties of 10 mK, their performance is sensitive to multiple environmental variables such as mechanical shock, thermal stress and humidity. Drift of sensor resistance over time necessitates expensive, time-consuming recalibrations using ultra-sensitive reference thermometers. These fundamental limitations of resistance thermometry, as well as the desire to reduce sensor ownership cost have ignited a substantial interest in the development of alternative temperature measurement solutions such as photonics-based temperature sensors. A wide variety of innovative photonic sensors have been proposed recently including functionalized dyes [2], hydrogels [3], fiber optics-based sensors [4], and silicon micro- and nanophotonic devices [5,6]. These innovative temperature sensors have the potential to leverage advances in frequency metrology to provide cost-effective measurement solutions. Here we present the results of our efforts in developing novel on-chip integrated silicon photonic temperature sensors with nanoscale footprint and ultra-high resolution as an alternative solution to legacy-based resistance thermometers. These sensors are Fabry-Perrot cavity type silicon photonic devices that are based on photonic crystal nanobeam cavity (PhCC), whose high-Q resonant frequency mode is highly sensitive to even ultra-small temperature variations. In this talk we describe nanofabrication, fiber coupling and packaging of these thermometers, as well as their performance. We will present a direct comparison of our photonic thermometers to Standard Platinum Resistance Thermometers, the best in class resistance temperature sensors used to disseminate the International Temperature Scale of 1990. The preliminary results indicate that our PhCC nanothermometers are capable of detecting changes of temperature as small as 10 µK and can achieve measurement capabilities that are on-par or even better than the state-of-the-art resistance thermometry.
[1] Strouse, NIST Spec. Publ. 250, 81 (2008).
[2] Donner et al., Nano Lett. 12, 2107 (2012).
[3] Ahmed, J. Adv. Res. 6, 105 (2015).
[4] Kersey et al., IEEE Photonics Technol. Lett. 4, 1183 (1992).
[5] Kim et al., Opt. Express 18, 22215 (2010).
[6] Klimov et al., Proc. SPIE 9486, 948609 (2015).