Graphene-integrated microring cavity for electronically controlled molecular fingerprinting

Abstract

Microring cavities supporting whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) have an exceptionally high quality factor (Q) and a small mode volume, greatly improving the interaction between light and matter, which has attracted great attention in various microscale/nanoscale photonic devices and potential applications. Recently, two-dimensional van der Waals (vdW) materials such as graphene have emerged as a potential platform for next-generation biosensing by enabling the confinement of light fields at the nanoscale. Here, we propose what we believe to be a novel approach to achieve molecular fingerprint retrieval by integrating graphene into a microring cavity and conducting numerical simulations using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The hybrid cavity exhibits high-quality WGMs with a high Q factor of up to 800. Moreover, the resonant wavelength can be electronically controlled through modulation of graphene’s Fermi level, enabling coverage of the entire free spectral range at infrared frequencies. By depositing a thin layer of biomolecular material (e.g., CBP) onto the surface of our hybrid cavity, we are able to accurately read out the absorption spectrum at multiple spectral points, thereby achieving broadband fingerprint retrieval for the targeted biomolecule. Our results pave the way for highly sensitive, chip-integrated, miniaturized, and electrically modulated infrared spectroscopy biosensing.