Photonic ultrasound sensors promise unparalleled spatial and temporal resolution in ultrasound imaging due to their size-independent noise figure, high sensitivity, and broad bandwidth. Optical materials can further improve performance and stability, but achieving small size, high sensitivity, and wide bandwidth remains challenging. This work introduces amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiC) for ultrasound sensing, offering strong optical confinement, low propagation loss, and high stability for miniaturized microring sensors. We demonstrate a compact detection system with a 20-transducers linear array coupled to a single bus waveguide. The sensors achieve an optical finesse of 1320 and intrinsic sensitivity of 78 fm kPa⁻¹, leading to a noise-equivalent pressure below 55mPa/Hz, calibrated from 3.36 MHz to 30 MHz. High-resolution imaging of fine structures validates real-world applicability. a-SiC is also easily integrated on most substrates due to its low deposition temperature. Our results position a-SiC as a promising solution for optical ultrasound sensing, combining miniaturization, low-loss, and high-sensitivity.

Real-time mapping of small forces with micrometer resolution is essential for studying soft and biological matter. However, existing techniques are slow, limited in spatial sampling or require non-planar substrates that can perturb cell behavior. Here we present silicon sensor arrays for rapid surface force mapping that operate using the elasto-optically induced wavelength shift in thin polymer-cladded optical ring resonators. Using a nano-indenter, we demonstrate that the sensor array reaches a force resolution down to 12 µN and shows a linear response. We present both a five-ring linear array and a 10×5 two-dimensional array at 15 µm pitch, and demonstrate the feasibility of localization and force mapping of a spherical nanoindentation tip. Combined measurement of forces by nano-indenter and the optical ring resonator sensor presents a methodology for calibrating this type of photonic force sensor. Moreover, good correspondence between measurements and finite element simulations provides evidence for the proposed operation mechanism. The shown combination of biocompatible claddings, strong opto-mechanical coupling, and foundry-ready photonics, presents a route towards scalable, real-time force mapping for soft-matter metrology, tactile interfaces, and in vitro mechanobiology.

Amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiC) has emerged as a compelling candidate for applications in integrated photonics, known for its high refractive index, high optical quality, high thermo-optic coefficient, and strong third-order nonlinearities. Furthermore, a-SiC can be easily deposited via CMOS-compatible chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques, allowing for precise thickness control and adjustable material properties on arbitrary substrates. Silicon nitride (SiN) is an industrially well-established and well-matured platform, which exhibits ultra-low propagation loss, but it is suboptimal for high-density reconfigurable photonics due to the large minimum bending radius and constrained tunability. In this work, we monolithically combine the a-SiC with SiN photonics, leveraging the merits of both platforms, and achieve the a-SiC/SiN heterogeneous integration with an on-chip interconnection loss of ( 0.28^+0.44_−0.28) dB and integration density increment exceeding 4444-fold. By implementing active devices on the a-SiC, we achieve 27 times higher thermo-optic tuning efficiency, with respect to the SiN photonic platform. In addition, the a-SiC/SiN platform gives the flexibility to choose the optimal fiber-to-chip coupling strategy depending on the interfacing platform, with efficient side-coupling on SiN and grating-coupling on the a-SiC platform. The proposed a-SiC/SiN photonic platform can foster versatile applications in programmable and quantum photonics, nonlinear optics, and beyond.

Ultrasound is widely used in medical imaging, and emerging photo-acoustic imaging is crucial for disease diagnosis. Currently, high-end photo-acoustic imaging systems rely on piezo-electric materials for detecting ultrasound waves, which come with sensitivity, noise, and bandwidth limitations. Advanced applications demand a large matrix of broadband, high-resolution, and scalable ultrasound sensors. Silicon photonic circuits have been introduced to meet these requirements by detecting ultrasound-induced deformation and stress in silicon waveguides. Although higher sensitivities could facilitate the exploration of new applications, the high stiffness of the waveguide materials constrains the intrinsic sensitivity of the silicon photonic circuits to ultrasound signals. Here, we explore the impact of the mechanical properties of a polymer cladding on the sensitivity of silicon photonic ultrasound sensors. Our model and experiments reveal that optimizing the polymer cladding's stiffness enhances the resonance wavelength sensitivity. Experimentally, we show a fourfold increase in the sensitivity compared to the sensors without a cladding polymer and, a twofold sensitivity increase compared to the sensors with a cladding polymer of saturated cross-linking density. Interestingly, comparing experiments with the optomechanical model suggests that the change in Young's Modulus alone cannot explain the sensitivity increase. In conclusion, polymer-coated silicon photonic ultrasound sensors exhibit potential for advanced photo-acoustic imaging applications. It offers the prospect of increasing the ultrasound detection sensitivity of silicon photonic ultrasound sensors while using CMOS-compatible processes. This paves the way to integrate the polymer-coated silicon photonic ultrasound sensors with electronics to utilize the sensors in advanced medical imaging applications.

Ultrasound is widely used in medical imaging, and photo-acoustics is an upcoming imaging modality for the diagnosis of diseases. Future applications require a large matrix of small, sensitive, and broadband ultrasound sensors. However, current high-end systems still use piezo-electric material to detect ultrasound, with limited sensitivity and bandwidth. Silicon photonic circuits can meet the requirements of size, bandwidth, and scalability when designed as ultrasound sensors. Namely, a silicon photonic waveguide deforms when the ultrasound pressure waves impinge on it, leading to a change in effective refractive index, n_e, due to geometrical and photo-elastic effects [1]. However, these effects are weak, which limits the intrinsic sensitivity of silicon photonic ultrasound sensors [2]. To significantly enhance sensitivity, silicon waveguides have been combined with acousto-mechanical structures, which achieved acoustomechanical-noise-limited sensing [3], but this is not compatible with standard photonic platforms. Besides that, recent demonstrations of waveguides coated with polymers also improved sensitivity of the silicon photonic ultrasound sensors significantly, but not sufficient to reach acoustomechnical-noise-limited sensing [4]. Here, we study the effect of mechanical and opto-mechanical properties of polymer claddings on the sensitivity of silicon photonic ultrasound sensors. Our aim is to enhance the sensitivity of these devices by implementing tailored polymer coatings. First, we model the refractive index sensitivity of these type of waveguides, i.e. the change in effective refractive index n_e due to the incident ultrasound plane-wave with a pressure P, and we (Equation presented) where n_c, p₁₂, E, and v are refractive index, elasto-optic coefficient, Young's modulus (stiffness), and Poisson's ratio of the cladding material, respectively. We assume the change in cladding index dominates sensitivity.

Mass spectrometry of intact nanoparticles and viruses can serve as a potent characterization tool for material science and biophysics. Inaccessible by widespread commercial techniques, the mass of single nanoparticles and viruses (>10MDa) can be readily measured by nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS)-based mass spectrometry, where charged and isolated analyte particles are generated by electrospray ionization (ESI) in air and transported onto the NEMS resonator for capture and detection. However, the applicability of NEMS as a practical solution is hindered by their miniscule surface area, which results in poor limit-of-detection and low capture efficiency values. Another hindrance is the necessity to house the NEMS inside complex vacuum systems, which is required in part to focus analytes toward the miniscule detection surface of the NEMS. Here, we overcome both limitations by integrating an ion lens onto the NEMS chip. The ion lens is composed of a polymer layer, which charges up by receiving part of the ions incoming from the ESI tip and consequently starts to focus the analytes toward an open window aligned with the active area of the NEMS electrostatically. With this integrated system, we have detected the mass of gold and polystyrene nanoparticles under ambient conditions and with two orders-of-magnitude improvement in capture efficiency compared to the state-of-the-art. We then applied this technology to obtain the mass spectrum of SARS-CoV-2 and BoHV-1 virions. With the increase in analytical throughput, the simplicity of the overall setup, and the operation capability under ambient conditions, the technique demonstrates that NEMS mass spectrometry can be deployed for mass detection of engineered nanoparticles and biological samples efficiently.