Integration of polymer waveguides for optical detection in microfabricated chemical analysis systems

Multimode polymer waveguides and fiber-to-waveguide couplers have been integrated with microfluidic channels by use of a single-mask-step procedure, which ensured self-alignment between the optics and the fluidics and allowed a fabrication and packaging time of only one day. Three fabrication procedures for obtaining hermetically sealed channels were investigated, and the spectrally resolved propagation loss (400-900 nm) of the integrated waveguides was determined for all three procedures. Two chemical absorbance cells with optical path lengths of 100 and 1000 microm were furthermore fabricated and characterized in terms of coupling loss, sensitivity, and limit of detection for measurements of the dye bromothymol blue.