Design of a novel sensor based on tapered photonic crystal with negative refraction structures

We report a novel design of an ultracompact sensor consisting of two-dimension photonic crystal with negative refraction coupled to a taper ended by multicavity structure. It is shown that this system exhibits promising properties in the area of sensing. The presence of nanocavities enables the detection of small amount of analytes. By controlling their radii, a large quality factor, Q is reached. It is demonstrated that the quality factor is a key parameter in determining the sensitivity to the analytes.