Proposal of highly sensitive optofluidic sensors based on dispersive photonic crystal waveguides

Optofluidic sensors based on highly dispersive two-dimensional photonic crystal waveguides are studied theoretically. Results show that these structures are strongly sensitive to the refractive index of the infiltrated liquid (n(1)), which is used to tune dispersion of the photonic crystal waveguide. The waveguide mode-gap edge shifts about 1.2 nm for delta n(1) = 0.002. The shifts can be explained well by band structure theory combined with first-order perturbation theory. These devices are potentially interesting for chemical sensing applications.