Development of optofluidics chip

Fiber optical biosensors have a huge potential for simple, continuous, rapid in-situ monitoring of biomolecules in biomedical, environmental, and food industries. In particular, photonic crystal fibers are promising because liquid or gaseous sample materials can be introduced into the air holes within the fiber, where it can interact directly with the guided light. As such, a higher interaction can be achieved and the robustness of the fiber is not compromised. In this project, a biosensing layer is immobilized in the holes within a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber. This biosensing layer then selectively binds to glucose molecules and alters the refractive index of the surface which in turn modifies the transmission of a light through the fiber. Numerical methods and experiments involving a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber were performed in an attempt to establish a relationship between change in refractive index and position of band gap edges.Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering