Resonant mirror device

Fig. 5.13. The resonant mirror device. The light from the soiuce is coupled through a prism Emd is totally reflected at the interface with the low refractive index layer, generating an evanescent field which couples light into the high refractive index waveguide layer The light transmitted through the waveguide also generates a evanescent field which interacts with the receptor layer.

A chemical sensor is a device that transforms chemical information into an analytically useful signal. Chemical sensors contain two basic functional units a receptor part and a transducer part. The receptor part is usually a sensitive layer, therefore a well founded knowledge about the mechanism of interaction of the analytes of interest and the selected sensitive layer has to be achieved. Various optical methods have been exploited in chemical sensors to transform the spectral information into useful signals which can be interpreted as chemical information about the analytes [1]. These are either reflectometric or refractometric methods. Optical sensors based on reflectometry are reflectometric interference spectroscopy (RIfS) [2] and ellipsometry [3,4], Evanescent field techniques, which are sensitive to changes in the refractive index, open a wide variety of optical detection principles [5] such as surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy (SPR) [6—8], Mach-Zehnder interferometer [9], Young interferometer [10], grating coupler [11] or resonant mirror [12] devices. All these optical... 

Semiconductor laser diodes are widely used in CD players, DVDs, printers, telecommunication or laser pointers. In the structure, they are similar to LEDs but they have a resonant cavity where laser amplification takes place. A Fabry-Perot cavity is established by polishing the end facets of the junction diode (so that they act as mirrors) and also by roughening the side edges to prevent leakage of light from the sides of the device. This structure is known as a homojunction laser and is a very basic one. Contemporary laser diodes are manufactured as double heterojunction structures. 

Q-switched laser A laser in which the state of the device introducing important losses in the resonant cavity and preventing lasing operation is suddenly switched to a state where the device introduces very low losses. This increases rapidly the Quality factor of the cavity, allowing the build-up of a short and very intense laser pulse. Typical pulse durations are in the ns range. The Q-switching may be active (a rotating mirror or electro-optic device) or passive (a saturable absorber). 

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