Spectrometer on a Chip

设备、组件和系统的小型化代表了几乎所有技术领域的一个日益增长的趋势。特别是，这一趋势对生物流体学、成像和通信领域产生了重大影响。在这项工作中，我们将重点放在这些应用的共同技术上，即光谱滤波。目前在这些应用中使用的光谱仪通常比其配套系统大。为此，本提案中所涉及的工作旨在开发这样一种光谱仪，即芯片上的光谱仪。我们的光谱仪由微米级衍射小波阵列、精密针孔和焦平面阵列组成。这个想法是基于这样一个事实：不同波长的光，当入射到衍射透镜上时，会聚焦在不同的轴向位置。因此，通过在特定光谱焦点的适当轴向位置放置针孔，可以使用空间滤波器有效地进行光谱滤波。因此，通过扫描针孔并以电子方式读取响应，可以获得在空间上记录到探测器阵列的完整光谱响应。该系统将通过使用定制电磁设计算法设计介观衍射透镜来实现，它们将使用多级电子束光刻和RIE蚀刻来制造，针孔阵列将在硅MEMS扫描仪中制造。该系统将与使用倒装芯片键合的读出电路集成。

The miniaturization of devices, components, and systems represents a growing trend in nearly all areas of technology. In particular, this trend is having a significant impact in the areas of biofluidics,imaging, and communications. In this effort we focus on a technology common to each of these applications, namely, spectral filtering. The spectrometers currently used in these applications are typically large in comparison to their companion system. To this end the work addressed in this proposal is targeted at developing such a spectrometer, i.e., a spectrometer on a chip. Our spectrometer consists of a diffractivelenslet array fabricated on the micron-scale, a precision pin-hole, and a focal plane array. The idea is based on the fact that light of different wavelengths, when incident on a diffractive lens, comes to focus at different axial locations. Therefore, by placing a pinhole at the appropriate axial location of a particular spectral focus, one can effectively perform spectral filtering using a spatial filter. Thus, by scanning the pinhole and reading off the response electronically a complete spectral response, spatially registered to a detector array, can be obtained. The proposed system will be realized through the design of meso-scopic diffractive lenses using custom electromagnetic design algorithms, they will be fabricated using multi-level electron beam lithography and RIE etching, and the pin-hole array will be fabricated in a silicon MEMS scanner. The system will be integrated with readout circuitry using flip-chip bonding.