Numerical study of opto-fluidic ring resonators for biosensor applications.

The opto-fluidic ring resonator (OFRR) biosensor is numerically characterized in whispering gallery mode (WGM). The ring resonator includes a ring, a waveguide and a gap separating the ring and the waveguide. Dependence of the resonance characteristics on the resonator size parameters such as the ring diameter, the ring thickness, the waveguide width, and the gap width between the ring and the waveguide are investigated. For this purpose, we use the finite element method with COMSOL Multiphysics software to solve the Maxwell's equations. The resonance frequencies, the free spectral ranges (FSR), the full width at half-maximum (FWHM), finesse (F), and quality factor of the resonances (Q) are examined. The resonant frequencies are dominantly affected by the resonator diameter while the gap width, the ring thickness and the waveguide width have negligible effects on the resonant frequencies. FWHM, the quality factor Q and the finesse F are most strongly affected by the gap width and moderately influenced by the ring diameter, the waveguide width and the ring thickness. In addition, our simulation demonstrates that there is an optimum range of the waveguide width for a given ring resonator and this value is between ~2.25 μm and ~2.75 μm in our case.