Whispering gallery mode resonator (WGMR) microspheres are of intense interest for chemical and biological sensing applications due to the extraordinary sensitivity of their emission spectra towards the local environmental refractive index. To date, efforts to utilize WGMRs for sensing applications have stringent experimental requirements to correlate specific spectral shifts/changes to an analyte including 1) positional knowledge, 2) reference spectra for each microsphere, and 3) high mechanical stability . Consequently, this can hinder adequate mixing and incorporation of analytes and creates challenges for remote sensing. This work describes a continuous flow technique for measuring WGM spectra of dye-doped microspheres suspended in solution and an accompanying analysis scheme that can extract the local refractive index without <i>a</i> <i>priori</i> knowledge of the resonator size and position and without a reference spectrum. This rapid, high-throughput technique, thus circumvents the issues outlined for conventional WGMR analysis schemes and opens the door towards sample tracking and long range remote sensing.

Continuous flow measurements of Whispering gallery mode spectra for characterization of microsphere resonators and their local environment

ACS Spring 2022

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