NanoPlasmonics, Microphotonics & Imaging

Real-time monitoring of dynamic biological processes in the body is critical to understanding disease progression and treatment response. These data, for instance, can help address the lower than 50% response rates to cancer immunotherapy. However, current clinical imaging modalities lack the molecular contrast, resolution, and chronic usability for rapid and accurate response assessments. Here, we present a fully wireless image sensor featuring a 2.5 × 5 mm 2 CMOS integrated circuit for multicolor fluorescence imaging deep in tissue. The sensor operates wirelessly via...

Integrated silicon photonic switches can serve as primary building blocks for low-latency, high-bandwidth interconnects for communication in data-intensive scenarios ranging from servers in datacenters to chiplets in multi-chip integrated packages. Our group has been developing MEMS-based large-scale silicon photonic switches which are particularly attractive for their low-loss, high-extinction, and low-power performance as well as sub-microsecond switching speed. Previous demonstrations, although fully compatible with CMOS foundries, relied upon a custom fabrication stack. The goal of the...

Access to affordable and user-friendly biosensors is crucial for advancing global healthcare. While lateral flow immunoassays have been the primary solution for decades, their limited sensitivity and suboptimal sample utilization present challenges. This project represents a systematic progression towards developing economically viable biosensors with heightened sensitivity, covering a range of diseases from viral infections to cancer. By integrating nanoplasmonics to induce visually perceptible signals and harnessing the coffee ring effect for protein pre-concentration, we achieved...

We developed a new architecture suitable for building a large-scale optical switch with fast response time. We have demonstrated switches with a scale of 240x240 and speed of sub microsecond using our new architecture. The switch architecture consists of an optical crossbar network with MEMS-actuated couplers and is implemented on a silicon photonics platform. To our knowledge this is the largest monolithic switch, and the largest silicon photonic integrated circuit, reported to date. The passive matrix architecture of our switch is fundamentally more scalable than that of multistage...