Simultaneous Detection of Relative Humidity and Temperature Based on Silicon On-Chip Cascaded Photonic Crystal Nanobeam Cavities

In this paper, we propose and numerically demonstrate a novel cascaded silicon-on-insulator (SOI) photonic crystal nanobeam cavity (PCNC) dual-parameter sensor for the simultaneous detection of relative humidity (RH) and temperature. The structure consists of two independent PCNCs supporting two different resonant modes: a dielectric-mode and an air-mode, respectively. The dielectric-mode nanobeam cavities (cav(1)) are covered with SU-8 cladding to increase the sensitivity ratio contrast between RH sensing and temperature sensing. The air-mode nanobeam cavities (cav(2)) are coated with a water-absorbing polyvinyl-alcohol (PVA) layer that converts the change in RH into a change in refractive index (RI) under different ambient RH levels, thereby inducing a wavelength shift. Due to the positive thermo-optic (TO) coefficient of silicon and the negative TO coefficient of SU-8 cladding, the wavelength responses take the form of a red shift for cav(2) and a blue shift for cav(1) as the ambient temperature increases. By using 3D finite-difference time-domain (3D-FDTD) simulations, we prove the feasibility of simultaneous sensing by monitoring a single output transmission spectrum and applying the sensor matrix. For cav(1), the RH and temperature sensitivities are 0 pm/%RH and -37.9 pm/K, while those of cav(2) are -389.2 pm/%RH and 58.6 pm/K. The sensitivity ratios of temperature and RH are -1.5 and 0, respectively, which is the reason for designing two different resonant modes and also implies great potential for realizing dual-parameter sensing detection. In particular, it is also noteworthy that we demonstrate the ability of the dual-parameter sensor to resist external interference by using the dual wavelength matrix method. The maximum RH and temperature detection errors caused by the deviation of resonance wavelength 1 pm are only 0.006% RH and 0.026 K, which indicates that it achieves an excellent anti-interference ability. Furthermore, the structure is very compact, occupying only 32 mu m x 4 mu m (length x width). Hence, the proposed sensor shows promising prospects for compact lab-on-chip integrated sensor arrays and sensing with multiple parameters.