Oil detection by novel optical means: Nanophotonic Sensors

Time: 12:45 – 13:30, October 18
Room: 02.110

Real-time in-situ monitoring of flowing oil in small space is a challenge that scientists and engineers are facing. Limited to the large footprints, traditional fiber sensors are incompetent to fulfill this duty. To overcome the challenge, nanophotonic sensors are investigated as novel optical means to sense and detect oil on small chips. In this presentation, I’ll introduce photonic crystal based nanophotonic sensors for the fast detection of oil and water in streams.  With deliberate designs, photons are strongly confined around the nano-structures of the sensors, and strong light-matter-interactions between flowing oil and water with photons are observed.The sensor system is ultra-sensitive to the variation of percentage of oil in water. In experiment, the sensor chips were integrated with micro fluid channels. Alternating fluid deliveries were applied on the sensor-chips with syringe-pump controlled ratios of water and oil. Excellent agreements between the measured data and the video images of streams were found. The sensors can sense the alternation between oil and water within 1 second, and the estimated dynamic percentages of oil in water were very close to the real input. Nanophotonic sensors provide more possibilities for the detection of oil, which can be used as important complementarities to other traditional sensing methods.