Study of a low-cost trimodal polymer waveguide for interferometric optical biosensors

A novel evanescent wave biosensor based on modal interaction between the fundamental mode and the second order mode is proposed and numerically demonstrated. By taking advantage of their symmetries, it is possible to design a device where only the fundamental and the second order modes can propagate, without excitation of the first order mode. With this selection of modes it is possible to achieve a high sensitivity behavior in the biosensor configuration, due to the strong interaction between the evanescent field and the outer surface as compared to previous evanescent wave-based biosensor designs.