Optofluidics in Bio-Chemical Analysis

Optofluidics organically integrates microfluidics and photonics and is an emerging technology in biological and chemical analysis. In this paper, we overview the recent studies in bio-chemical sensing applications of optofluidics. Particularly, we report the research progress in our lab in developing diverse optofluidic devices using two unique configurations: thin-walled capillary based optofluidic ring resonator (OFRR) and multi-hole capillary based optofluidic platforms. The first one has been developed to be OFRR-based label-free biosensor, microfluidic laser based intra-cavity sensors, and on-column optical detectors for micro-gas chromatography (μGC), while the second one has been developed to be optofluidic Fabry-Pérot based label-free biosensor and optofluidic Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) biosensor. All of these devices take advantage of superior fluidic handling capability and high sensitivity, and have been used in detecting various biological and chemical analytes in either liquid or vapor phase.