Design and analysis of silicon antiresonant reflecting optical waveguides for evanescent field sensor

Abstract

Silicon based antiresonant reflecting optical waveguides (ARROW's) have been designed in order to obtain a high sensitive optical transducer for sensing applications. The designed sensor has an integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer configuration. The optical waveguides that form its structure have to verify two conditions: monomode behavior and high surface sensitivity. In this paper, we present a theoretical modeling of the propagation characteristics and surface sensitivity of the ARROW structure.