REDFINCH consortium to develop gas sensors using mid-IR PIC platform
Leti (Grenoble, France), a research institute of CEA Tech, announced the launch of the REDFINCH consortium to develop the next generation of miniaturized, portable optical sensors for chemical detection in both gases and liquids. Initial target applications are in the petrochemical and dairy industries.
The consortium of eight European research institutes and companies will focus on developing high-performance, cost-effective chemical sensors, based on mid-infrared photonic integrated circuits (MIR PICs). Silicon PICs--integrating optical circuits onto millimeter-size silicon chips--create extremely robust miniature systems, in which discrete components are replaced by on-chip equivalents. This makes them easier to use and reduce their cost dramatically, expected at least by a factor 10.
To develop these chemical sensors, the consortium must overcome the significant challenge of implementing these capabilities in the important mid-infrared region (2-20 μm wavelength range), where many important chemical and biological species have strong absorption fingerprints. This allows both the detection and concentration measurement of a wide range of gases, liquids and biomolecules, which is crucial for applications such as health monitoring and diagnosis, detection of biological compounds and monitoring of toxic gases.
Initially, REDFINCH will focus on three specific applications: (1) process gas analysis in refineries; (2) gas leak detection in petrochemical plants and pipelines; and (3) protein analysis in liquids for the dairy industry.
Silicon photonics leverages the advantages of high-performance CMOS technology, providing low-cost mass manufacturing, high-fidelity reproduction of designs and access to high-refractive index contrasts that enable high-performance nanophotonics.
"Despite the mid-infrared wavelength region's importance for a wide range of applications, current state-of-the-art sensing systems in the MIR tend to be large and delicate. This significantly limits their spreading in real-world applications," said Jean-Guillaume Coutard, an instrumentation engineer at Leti, which is coordinating the project. "By harnessing the power of photonic integrated circuits, using hybrid and monolithic integration of III-V diode and interband cascade and quantum cascade materials with silicon, the consortium will create high-performance, cost-effective sensors for a number of industries."
In addition to Leti, whose expertise includes the design and manufacture of PICs on a 200mm pilot line and integrated photoacoustic cells on silicon, the consortium members and contributions include the Cork Institute of Technology (Ireland) for PIC design & fabrication, hybrid integration; Université de Montpellier (France) for laser growth on Si, photodetector growth; Technische Universität Wien (Austria) for liquid spectroscopy, assembly/test of sensors; mirSense (France) for MIR sensor products, laser module integration; Argotech a.s. (Czech Republic) for assembly/packaging of PICs; Fraunhofer IPM (Germany) for gas spectroscopy, instrument design/assembly; and Endress+Hauser (Germany) for process gas analysis and expertise, testing validation.
Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)
Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.