A늌W

2009 Seminar

20090912(Stanford, CA)

              Fiber Optic Surface Enhanced Raman Sensor for High Sensitivity and Automatic Molecule Identification

 

Abstract:

The demand for sensors for detecting chemical and biological agents is greater than ever before, including medical, environmental, food safety, military, and security applications. At present, most detection or sensing techniques tend to be either non-molecular specific, bulky, expensive, relatively inaccurate, or unable to provide real time data. Clearly, alternative sensing technologies are urgently needed. Recently, we have been working to develop a compact fiber optic surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensor system that integrates various novel ideas to achieve compactness, high sensitivity and consistency, molecular specificity, and automatic preliminary identification capabilities. The unique sensor architecture is expected to bring SERS sensors to practical applications due to a combination of 1) novel SERS substrates that provide the high sensitivity and consistency, molecular specificity, and applicability to a wide range of compounds;2) a unique hollow core optical fiber probe with double SERS substrate structure that provides the compactness, reliability, low cost, and ease of sampling; and 3) an innovative matched spectral filter set that provides automatic preliminary molecule identification. In this talk, we will discuss the principle of operation of various building blocks, demonstrate our recent results, and highlight some potential applications.

Biography:

Claire Gu received her Ph.D. in Physics from Caltech in 1989. Then she worked as a member of the technical staff at Rockwell Science Center, and went to Penn State in 1992 as an assistant professor. In 1997, she came to UC Santa Cruz as the first Electrical Engineering faculty member, and is now a professor in EE. Her research interests include fiber optics, holographic data storage, liquid crystal displays, nonlinear optics, and optical information processing; with a current emphasis on fiber sensors using SERS (surface enhanced Raman scattering). She has published more than 200 journal and conference papers in these areas. In addition, she has co-authored a text/reference book on "Optics of Liquid Crystal Displays" (2nd edition to appear in early 2010), and co-edited two technical books on photorefractive nonlinear optics and applications. She received a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1993. From 2000 to 2006, she served as a Topical Editor of Optics Letters. In 2007, she was elected a fellow of SPIE (The International Society of Optical Engineering).