Cavity-enhanced chemical sensing for next-generation portable devices

Optical microcavities provide a means to perform ultra-sensitive chemical sensing by measuring absorption and fluorescence signals from microscopic fluid samples. However they have previously been limited to laboratory demonstrators due to issues with mechanical and thermal stability of the highly resonant cavity modes. This project involves the development of a new approach to cavity-enhanced sensing which is robust to environmental noise, and can therefore be used to make real-world devices for environmental science, point-of-care diagnostics and field-based threat detection. Within the project you will fabricate the microcavities and build basic sensor systems around them to demonstrate their effectiveness.