OMEGA OPTICS, INC. — Department of Defense STTR Phase I: AF19B-T001

Description

Optical spectroscopy is an indispensable tool in numerous areas including optical communication, sensing, material analysis, environmental and medical applications. The advance at on-chip spectrometer empowers compact, low-cost spectroscopy operating for the portable sensing and enhancement of lab-on-a-chip. Since the optical path length limits the spectral resolution, particularly high-performance spectrometers, which rely on dispersive components, are inevitably bulky and expensive. A great potential for many applications is anticipated, such as medical diagnosis, chemical and biological sensing, biomedical imaging modality, and environmental monitoring to name a few. Different solutions can be visualized as integrated spectrometers, such as Fourier-Transform spectrometers (FTS), arrayed waveguide gratings (AWG), or echelle gratings. A particularly promising platform for the implementation of miniature spectrometers is planar-waveguide photonic chip technology. In planar-waveguide spectrometers, light is collected and dispatched through either a dispersive grating element (DE) or a Fourier-transform interferometer array. Fourier-transform spectrometers (FTS) are preferable based on higher optical throughput and higher spectral resolution. In this work, we propose an integrated compressed sensing FTS based plasmonic circuitry on VCSEL platform. We will show that vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) can be employed as an on-chip, electrically pumped source, when operated in forward bias.