pH sensing using whispering gallery modes of a silica hollow bottle resonator

The limitations of electrochemical pH sensors have stimulated the development of optical pH sensing methods. In the method reported here, swellable pH-sensitive polymer particles are deposited on the interior surface of a silica hollow bottle resonator. As the pH of the buffer solution in contact with the particles increases, the refractive index of the particles decreases. As a result, whispering gallery modes with internal evanescent components shift in frequency as a function of pH. This shift is monitored by the throughput of tunable diode laser light coupled into the whispering gallery modes using a tapered fiber. Plots of selected mode frequencies vs. pH yielded sigmoid shaped titration curves similar to those obtained using turbidity to monitor refractive index changes of the particles as a function of pH. The response time of 10-15 s and best resolution of 0.06 pH unit represent improvements over previous optical pH sensing methods.