Optical properties of Cantor nanostructures made from porous silicon: A sensing application

The fabrication and characterization of pSi based triadic Cantor multilayer structures is reported. Transfer matrix method was used to calculate the corresponding reflectivity spectrum and was compared with the experimental data. A good agreement between the theoretical and experimental reflectivity spectra is reported for the wavelengths corresponding to the non-absorbing region for silicon. The reduction in the quality of the transmission modes has been attributed to the dispersion and backscattering from the interfaces of the complete structure. As the optical response of pSi based sensor depends on the characteristics of the multilayered photonic structure, a comparison of sensitivity of 3rd order Cantor structure with a regular microcavity structure of similar optical thickness resulted in an optical response dependent on the choice of the refractive indices. An optimal choice of the refractive indices for the Cantor structures resulted in an increased red-shift (due to the enhancement of the refractive indices of the corresponding layers), after the surface modification of the photonic device. Such structures offer the possibility to improve the sensing response of the pSi-based photonic structures. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.