Shift happens: Optical sensing with Dyakonov-Tamm waves

An optical modality to sense a fluid by exploiting Dyakonov-Tamm (DT) waves was devised. In the modality, the fluid is present on both sides of the guiding interface. Theory showed that the angular location of reflectance dip in a practically implementable configuration will shift if the refractive index of the fluid changes. Furthermore, the detection sensitivity will decrease as the refractive index of the fluid increases over a wide range, and should be comparable to that for sensing modalities that exploit surface-plasmon-polariton (SPP) waves. Higher sensitivities are available with DT waves than with SPP waves, and the DT-wave-based sensor should be simpler to fabricate than the SPP-wave-based sensor. Multiple DT waves are excitable at the same frequency, leading to multiple channels for more reliable sensing as well as for sensing multiple analytes simultaneously.