A Miniature Biosensor Based Guided-Wave Technology and Acousto-Optic Tunable Filter

Brimrose proposes to research and build in this SBIR Phase I program, a miniature optically based immunosensor for biodetection. By combining state of the art guide-wave technology, integrated optics and acousto-optics, this biosensor offers advantages of high sensitivity, extra fast speed, reliability, ruggedness, light weight, small size, low maintenance and potentially very low cost because of opto-electronic integration. In detection of biological agents, a novel Evanescent Guided-Wave Fluorescence (EGWF) method is used in which evanescent optical guided-wave in an optical waveguide is used to excite and collect the fluorescence from the bioagents attached to the waveguide surface. The fluorescence spectral analysis is performing by incorporating an Integrated Optic Acousto-Optic Tunable Filter (IOAOTF) which is monolithicly integrated in the same waveguide.