Nano-Pressure and Temperature Sensor Based on Hexagonal Photonic Crystal Ring Resonator

In the present work, two-dimensional (2D) hexagonal photonic crystal ring resonator (PCRR) structure is designed for both pressure and temperature sensing based on effective refractive index modulation of silicon. The nanosensor is designed to monitor the pressure from 0.04 to 6 GPa and temperature from 5 to 540 °C. The proposed nanosensing platform is composed of hexagonal PCRR and two inline quasi-waveguides in a 2D hexagonal lattice with circular rods arranged in air host. The hexagonal PCRR is playing a very important role in sensing the different pressure and temperature levels over a wide dynamic range. The plane wave expansion method (PWE) is implemented to calculate photonic band gap (PBG), which is used to identify the operating wavelength range of the sensor. The functional parameters of the sensor are evaluated by finite-difference time-domain method (FDTD). The functional parameters are the dynamic range, resonant wavelength, sensitivity, transmission efficiency, and quality factor. The FDTD results show that the resonant wavelength of the PCRR is red shifted with increasing the pressure and temperature. The designed sensor offers high sensitivity, high transmission efficiency and good quality factor with ultra-compact size; hence, it is extremely suitable for nanotechnology-based sensing applications.