Miniaturized disordered photonic molecule spectrometer

Yujia Zhang; Tom Albrow-Owen; Zhenyu Zhao; Yinpeng Chen; Yaotian Zhao; Hannah Joyce; Tawfique Hasan; Zongyin Yang; Yikai Su; Xuhan Guo

doi:10.1038/s41377-024-01705-w

Your Location：

Home >

Browse articles >

Miniaturized disordered photonic molecule spectrometer

Original Articles

- Miniaturized disordered photonic molecule spectrometer
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 14, Issue 5, Pages: 1446-1458(2025)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.State Key Laboratory of Photonics and Communications, School of Information and Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
  2.Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0FA, UK
  3.College of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
- Author bio：
  
  Tawfique Hasan (th270@cam.ac.uk)
  Zongyin Yang (yangzongyin@zju.edu.cn)
  Yikai Su (yikaisu@sjtu.edu.cn)
  Xuhan Guo (guoxuhan@sjtu.edu.cn)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-024-01705-w
  CLC：
- Received：09 June 2024，
  
  Revised：29 September 2024，
  
  Accepted：30 November 2024，
  
  Published Online：31 March 2025，
  
  Published：31 May 2025
- Accepted：
Scan QR Code
Zhang, Y. J. et al. Miniaturized disordered photonic molecule spectrometer. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 1446-1458 (2025).
DOI：

Zhang, Y. J. et al. Miniaturized disordered photonic molecule spectrometer. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 1446-1458 (2025). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-024-01705-w.

摘要

Abstract

The burgeoning field of computational spectrometers is rapidly advancing

providing a pathway to highly miniaturized

on-chip systems for in-situ or portable measurements. The performance of these systems is typically limited in its encoder section. The response matrix is largely compromised with redundancies

due to the periodic intensity or overly smooth responses. As such

the inherent interdependence among the physical size

resolution

and bandwidth of spectral encoders poses a challenge to further miniaturization progress. Achieving high spectral resolution necessitates a long optical path length

leading to a larger footprint required for sufficient spectral decorrelation

resulting in a limited detectable free-spectral range (FSR). Here

we report a groundbreaking ultra-miniaturized disordered photonic molecule spectrometer that surpasses the resolution-bandwidth-footprint metric of current spectrometers. This computational spectrometer utilizes complicated electromagnetic coupling to determinately generate quasi-random spectral response matrices

a feature absents in other state-of-the-art systems

fundamentally overcoming limitations present in the current technologies. This configuration yields an effectively infinite FSR while upholding a high Q-factor (

7.74 × 10

). Through dynamic manipulation of photon frequency

amplitude

and phase

a broad operational bandwidth exceeding 100 nm can be attained with an ultra-high spectral resolution of 8 pm

all encapsulated within an ultra-compact footprint measuring 70 × 50 μm

. The disordered photonic molecule spectrometer is constructed on a CMOS-compatible integrated photonics platform

presenting a pioneering approach for high-performance and highly manufacturable miniaturized spectroscopy.

关键词

Keywords

references

Bacon, C. P., Mattley, Y. & DeFrece, R. Miniature spectroscopic instrumentation: Applications to biology and chemistry. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 75 , 1–16 (2004)..

Jamrógiewicz, M. Application of the near-infrared spectroscopy in the pharmaceutical technology. J. Pharm. Biomed. Anal. 66 , 1–10 (2012)..

Holzgrabe, U. et al. Quantitative NMR spectroscopy—applications in drug analysis. J. Pharm. Biomed. Anal. 38 , 806–812 (2005)..

Phillips, T. G. & Keene, J. Submillimeter astronomy (heterodyne spectroscopy). Proc. IEEE 80 , 1662–1678 (1992)..

Yang, W. et al. Ultracompact computational spectroscopy with a detour-phased planar lens. Light.: Adv. Manuf. 5 , 1–9 (2024)..

Cheben, P. et al. A high-resolution silicon-on-insulator arrayed waveguide grating microspectrometer with sub-micrometer aperture waveguides. Opt. Express 15 , 2299–2306 (2007)..

Momeni, B., Hosseini, E. S. & Adibi, A. Planar photonic crystal microspectrometers in silicon-nitride for the visible range. Opt. Express 17 , 17060–17069 (2009)..

Faraji-Dana, M. et al. Compact folded metasurface spectrometer. Nat. Commun. 9 , 4196 (2018)..

Nitkowski, A., Chen, L. & Lipson, M. Cavity-enhanced on-chip absorption spectroscopy using microring resonators. Opt. Express 16 , 11930–11936 (2008)..

Cen, Q. et al. Microtaper leaky-mode spectrometer with picometer resolution. eLight 3 , 9 (2023)..

Ni, Y. et al. Computational spectropolarimetry with a tunable liquid crystal metasurface. eLight 2 , 23 (2022)..

Li, A. et al. Advances in cost-effective integrated spectrometers. Light Sci. Appl. 11 , 174 (2022)..

Souza, M. C. M. M. et al. Fourier transform spectrometer on silicon with thermo-optic non-linearity and dispersion correction. Nat. Commun. 9 , 665 (2018)..

Pohl, D. et al. An integrated broadband spectrometer on thin-film lithium niobate. Nat. Photonics 14 , 24–29 (2020)..

Velasco, A. V. et al. High-resolution Fourier-transform spectrometer chip with microphotonic silicon spiral waveguides. Opt. Lett. 38 , 706–708 (2013)..

Dinh, T. T. D. et al. Mid-infrared Fourier-transform spectrometer based on metamaterial lateral cladding suspended silicon waveguides. Opt. Lett. 47 , 810–813 (2022)..

Li, A. & Fainman, Y. Integrated silicon Fourier transform spectrometer with broad bandwidth and ultra‐high resolution. Laser Photonics Rev. 15 , 2000358 (2021)..

Xiong, J. et al. Dynamic brain spectrum acquired by a real-time ultraspectral imaging chip with reconfigurable metasurfaces. Optica 9 , 461–468 (2022)..

Brown, C. et al. Neural network-based on-chip spectroscopy using a scalable plasmonic encoder. ACS Nano 15 , 6305–6315 (2021)..

Yoon, H. H. et al. Miniaturized spectrometers with a tunable van der Waals junction. Science 378 , 296–299 (2022)..

Yuan, S. F. et al. A wavelength-scale black phosphorus spectrometer. Nat. Photonics 15 , 601–607 (2021)..

Yang, Z. Y. et al. Single-nanowire spectrometers. Science 365 , 1017–1020 (2019)..

Zheng, B. J. et al. On‐chip measurement of photoluminescence with high sensitivity monolithic spectro meter. Adv. Optical Mater. 8 , 2000191 (2020)..

Zheng, B. J. et al. Single-detector black phosphorus monolithic spectrometer with high spectral and temporal resolution. Appl. Phys. Lett. 120 , 251102 (2022)..

Redding, B. et al. Compact spectrometer based on a disordered photonic chip. Nat. Photonics 7 , 746–751 (2013)..

Hartmann, W. et al. Waveguide-integrated broadband spectrometer based on tailored disorder. Adv. Optical Mater. 8 , 1901602 (2020)..

Liu, T. R. & Fiore, A. Designing open channels in random scattering media for on-chip spectrometers. Optica 7 , 934–939 (2020)..

Hartmann, W. et al. Broadband spectrometer with single-photon sensitivity exploiting tailored disorder. Nano Lett. 20 , 2625–2631 (2020)..

Li, A. & Fainman, Y. On-chip spectrometers using stratified waveguide filters. Nat. Commun. 12 , 2704 (2021)..

Redding, B. et al. E vanescently coupled multimode spiral spectrometer. Optica 3 , 956–962 (2016)..

Edrei, E. et al. Chip-scale atomic wave-meter enabled by machine learning. Sci. Adv. 8 , eabn3391 (2022)..

Zhang, M. et al. Monolithic ultra-high- Q lithium niobate microring resonator. Optica 4 , 1536–1537 (2017)..

Kim, J. H. Multicollinearity and misleading statistical results. Korean J. Anesthesiol. 72 , 558–569 (2019)..

Xu, H. N. et al. Integrated single-resonator spectrometer beyond the free-spectral-range limit. ACS Photonics 10 , 654–666 (2023)..

Xu, H. N. et al. Breaking the resolution-bandwidth limit of chip-scale spectrometry by harnessing a dispersion-engineered photonic molecule. Light Sci. Appl. 12 , 64 (2023)..

Xu, H. N. et al. Cavity-enhanced scalable integrated temporal random-speckle spectrometry. Optica 10 , 1177–1188 (2023)..

Marchal, C. The Three-Body Problem. (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2012).

Gao, L. et al. Computational spectrometers enabled by nanophotonics and deep learning. Nanophotonics 11 , 2507–2529 (2022)..

Newton, I. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Royal Society, London, 1687).

Poincaré, H. Sur le problème des trois corps et les équations de la dynamique. Acta Mathematica 13 , 1–270 (1890)..

Broucke, R. On relative periodic solutions of the planar general three-body problem. Celest. Mech. 12 , 439–462 (1975)..

Chremmos, I., Schwelb, O.&Uzunoglu, N. Photonic Microresonator Research and Applications. (New York: Springer, 2010).

Schmidt, C. et al. Near-field mapping of optical eigenstates in coupled disk microresonators. Phys. Rev. A 85 , 033827 (2012)..

Hammer, M. HCMT models of optical microring-resonator circuits. J. Optical Soc. Am. B 27 , 2237–2246 (2010)..

Hansen, P. C. Rank-Deficient and Discrete Ill-Posed Problems: Numerical Aspects of Linear Inversion. (Societyfor Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 2005).

Hansen, P. C. Discrete Inverse Problems: Insight and Algorithms. (Philadelphia: SIAM, 2010).

Cheng, Z. W. et al. Generalized modular spectrometers combining a compact nanobeam microcavity and computational reconstruction. ACS Photonics 9 , 74–81 (2022)..

Zhang, J. H. et al. Cascaded nanobeam spectrometer with high resolution and scalability. Optica 9 , 517–521 (2022)..

Hadibrata, W. et al. Compact, high-resolution inverse-designed on-chip spectrometer based on tailored disorder modes. Laser Photonics Rev. 15 , 2000556 (2021)..

Zhang, Z. Y. et al. Compact high resolution speckle spectrometer by using linear coherent integrated network on silicon nitride platform at 776 nm. Laser Photonics Rev. 15 , 2100039 (2021)..

Sun, C. L. et al. Scalable on-chip microdisk resonator spectrometer. Laser Photonics Rev. 17 , 2200792 (2023)..

Zhang, L. et al. Ultrahigh-resolution on-chip spectrometer with silicon photonic resonators. Opto-Electron. Adv. 5 , 210100 (2022)..

Yao, C. H. et al. Broadband picometer-scale resolution on-chip spectrometer with reconfigurable photonics. Light Sci. Appl. 12 , 156 (2023)..

Yao, C. H. et al. Integrated reconstructive spectrometer with programmable photonic circuits. Nat. Commun. 14 , 6376 (2023)..

Zhao, Y. T. et al. Miniaturized computational spectrometer based on two-photon absorption. Optica 11 , 399–402 (2024)..

Le Coarer, E. et al. Wavelength-scale stationary-wave integrated Fourier-transform spectrometry. Nat. Photonics 1 , 473–478 (2007)..

Zheng, S. N. et al. Microring resonator-assisted Fourier transform spectrometer with enhanced resolution and large bandwidth in single chip solution. Nat. Commun. 10 , 2349 (2019)..

Finco, G. et al. Monolith ic thin-film lithium niobate broadband spectrometer with one nanometre resolution. Nat. Commun. 15 , 2330 (2024)..

Xu, H. N. et al. Scalable integrated two-dimensional Fourier-transform spectrometry. Nat. Commun. 15 , 436 (2024)..

Views

Downloads

CSCD

Alert me when the article has been cited

Submit

Tools

Publicity Resources

No data

Related Author

No data

Related Institution

No data

⁰