(319e) Complex Liquid Emulsions and on-Chip Ring Resonators for Bacteria Detection

Complex Liquid Emulsions and On-Chip Ring Resonators for Bacteria
Detection

Suchol Savagatrup and Timothy M. Swager

Complex liquid emulsions are a
class of sensors that translate chemical events into observable morphological
responses. Recently, we reported selective and sensitive methods to detect the
activity of enzymes and the presence of foodborne pathogens. These
methods of transduction rely solely on the changes in the
optical transmission of the emulsions upon changes in the morphology, which may
limit the generality of the analyte. In this presentation, we report the
novel approach to continuously sense and quantify the morphology of these
emulsions using on-chip ring resonators. The morphological changes of the
droplets are visualized by the characteristic of the transmission spectra of
the resonators. Specifically, the shift in the resonant wavelength of the ring
resonator is highly sensitive to even the small changes in the localized
effective refractive indices induced by the morphological switches. By tuning
the compositions of the droplets, we demonstrated the on-chip device capability
and sensitivity to detect different classes of analytes. We anticipate the
combination of complex liquid emulsions and integrated photonics will provide
ultra-compact, cost-effective, and generalized method for other chemical and
biological sensing schemes.