Design of Multicavities on Left-Handed Photonic-Crystal-Based Chemical Sensors

This paper presents a theoretical study on a novel chemical sensor platform based on a 2-D photonic crystal with negative refraction (PCNR). The proposed device consists of distributed multinanocavities embedded within the PCNR. A 2-D finite-difference time-domain method with perfectly matched layers has been employed to investigate the performance of the sensor for different analytes and structural parameters. The calculations show that it is possible to detect simultaneously two analytes when the refractive index is larger than that of water. The quality factor was determined to be around 105 when the radii of the central nanocavity is and that of the external is .