Photonic sensors for health and environmental monitoring

This paper focuses on new trends for photonic sensors with applications in health and environmental monitoring. Photonic sensors are under extensive development world-wide combining multidisciplinary research. Small, inexpensive, sensitive, selective, fast, robust, and remotely controllable sensors that are immune to electromagnetic interference are desired for applications such as environmental monitoring, healthcare, and for defense, chemical, and bio-agent detection. Different photonic sensor designs have demonstrated the potential to achieve these capabilities. Progress in materials, light sources, photo-detectors, and innovative solutions have driven the technology further. Our paper will demonstrate how sensor designs based on integrated optics, MOEMS, photonic crystal and photonic bandgap structures, nanomaterials, lab-on-chip, and microfluidics can offer attractive alternatives overcoming both technical limitations and cost issues associated with current sensors on the market.