Reminder: EE Ph.D. Dissertation Defense: Meredith M. Lee (Friday Nov. 11, 10AM, CIS-X Auditorium)

"Come for the food, stay for the free entertainment!"

-Meredith
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Meredith M. Lee
Stanford University
Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Electrical Engineering
Center for Integrated Systems
420 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4075
Fax: (650) 723-4659
mmlee@stanford.edu

http://linkedin.com/in/mmlee

University Ph.D. Dissertation Defense

Department of Electrical Engineering

 

Tunable Photonic Crystal Biosensors for Portable Label-Free Diagnostics

Meredith M. Lee

Advisor: Professor James S. Harris

Co-Advisor: Professor Shanhui Fan

Friday, November 11, 2011

10 AM (refreshments at 9:45 AM)

Allen (Center for Integrated Systems-X) Auditorium

Although there is a pressing global need for widely-deployable disease detection and monitoring systems, today's options for biochemical analysis are often bulky, slow, and expensive.  Miniaturization and integration of devices based on micro-arrays of sources, detectors, and active or passive biosensing surfaces provides a means to achieve handheld diagnostic capabilities with a 'lab-on-a-chip'.  In particular, the development of label-free sensors offers simplified sample preparation and the opportunity for multi-modal measurements for correlated detection.

In this talk, I will describe the design, simulation, fabrication, and characterization of label-free sensors utilizing current-tuned and temperature-tuned Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs), integrated photodetectors, photonic crystal slab resonators, and microfluidics.   The sensors operate in the VIS-NIR (650-850 nm) wavelength range for low background absorption and are designed for compatibility with previously demonstrated monolithically integrated fluorimeters.  In addition to showing a proof-of-concept prototype for single-slab refractive index sensing with tunable GaAs-based 670 nm VCSELs, I will present the design, fabrication, and experimental measurement of tunable-gap coupled photonic crystal slabs for increased flexibility and sensitivity.   These compact, parallel sensor architectures enable multiplexed, cost-effective on-chip biosensing, with packaged devices less than one cubic centimeter.