We report the design and manufacturing of a tunable VCSEL with an HCG MEMS mirror and an integrated detector oblique to the optical cavity for measuring output power without disturbing the laser cavity. This allows for a single laser device with integrated power monitoring capabilities that can be used in concert with external electronics to stabilize the power or monitor optical feedback of the device for sensing applications. The HCG tunable VCSEL is modified to incorporate a sacrificial layer capable of detecting light at the VCSEL’s operating wavelength. For the MEMS release process, the sacrificial layer is removed from the optical cavity defined by the VCSEL mirrors and active region. The release process is designed to create a cavern around the optical cavity and walls of such cavern are composed by sacrificial layer material. Thus, the sacrificial layer material is removed from the optical cavity, but is kept surrounding it. Light scattered at the interface semiconductor-air hits the cavern walls and modifies current through the MEMS terminals (Idet). Any change in VCSEL output power (Pout) is directly related to a change on Idet through MEMS terminal, creating a direct relationship of Pout vs. Idet. To the best of our knowledge, there is no previous report of a VCSEL with integrated oblique intracavity detector.
We report a label-free, highly sensitive biosensor using a vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) based measurement system for the detection and monitoring of biomolecular interactions. The sensor system consists of a VCSEL, a plastic guided mode resonant (GMR) filter, and two pin detectors. The system has several advantages such as extreme compactness, high sensitivity, high throughput, fast measurements, low power consumption, low cost, and the potential to become portable. Experimentally, the biosensor system has shown to be highly sensitive to the surface modifications due to molecular bindings, with the ability to detect the thickness variations <10Å and refractive index variations <0.005. The biosensor also has demonstrated its high sensitivity for the detection of antibody-antigen proteins bindings, with the mouse IgG concentration as low as 1pg/ml (6.7 femto-Molar), and its ability for measuring both static and dynamic interactions among proteins.
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