title: Effect of thickness disorder on the performance of photonic crystal surface wave sensors.
abstract: We investigated experimentally and numerically the robustness of optical sensors based on Bloch waves at the surface of periodic one-dimensional photonic crystals. The distributions of sensor characteristics caused by the fabrication uncertainties in dielectric layer thicknesses have been analyzed and robustness criteria have been set forth and discussed. We show that the performance of the surface wave sensors is sufficiently robust with respect to the changes of the photonic crystal layer thicknesses. Layer thickness optimization of the photonic crystal, carried out to achieve low limit of detection, leads to an improvement of the robustness of the surface wave sensors that is attributed to Bloch states lying deeper in the photonic band gap.
authors.forename: Aleksei
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Anopchenko
authors.forename: Agostino
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Occhicone
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rizzo
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sinibaldi
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Figliozzi
authors.forename: Norbert
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Danz
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Munzert
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Michelotti