Flexible Photonic Crystal Slabs for Microfluidic Integration

Photonic crystal slabs (PCS) on glass substrates have been studied and used extensively as a label-free platform for biomarker detection. Therefore, photonic crystal slabs are a promising approach for biomarker detection with wearable flexible sensor systems. In this work we demonstrate a novel approach for creating flexible photonic crystal slabs (f-PCS) on the basis of nanostructure transfer with a transparent adhesive tape. We demonstrate a proof-of-concept system combining a flexible photonic crystal slab with a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) microfluidic. The sensing approach is tested with refractive index measurements. We report limits of detection (LOD) for an f-PCS of 3.6 E-4 refractive index units (RIU) compared to 2.5 E-4 RIU for the corresponding rigid PCS.