A Tunable Fabry-Perot Optical Filter for Application in Biochemical Analysis of Human's Fluids

This paper reports a Fabry-Perot tunable optical filter for application in clinical analysis, especially to measure the concentration of biochemical substances in biological fluids. Its tunable characteristics enable the measurement of different biochemical substances with the same device. It is composed of two parallel thin silver mirrors with a beta-PVDF (poly(vinylidene fluoride) in its beta phase) film in-between as the resonance cavity. The filter is tuned by adjusting the space between the mirrors through an electric voltage inducing dipolar orientation in the beta-PVDF film. Once the thickness changes of the beta-PVDF film is due to variations at a molecular level, the changes are rather homogeneous within the samples. As a result, this approach achieves parallelism between the two mirrors, which is a complex problem to solve in conventional Fabry-Perot optical filters. Moreover, compared with an array of non-tunable optical filters with different cavity lengths, usually used to solve the parallelism problem, this device has a reduced area, its fabrication process is easier and it covers a wider spectral range. In addition, when used as a part of a biological fluids analysis system, it avoids the need for expensive optics and enables low-cost and portable devices, which would improve the use of spectrophotometric analysis in clinical diagnostics

[1]  O. Heavens.  Thin-film Optical Filters , 1986 .

[2]  J. Mano,et al.  FTIR AND DSC STUDIES OF MECHANICALLY DEFORMED β-PVDF FILMS , 2001 .

[3]  Matthias Born,et al.  Principles of Optics: Electromagnetic Theory of Propa-gation, Interference and Di raction of Light , 1999 .

[4]  Daniel Puiu Poenar.  Thin Film Colour Sensors , 1996 .

[5]  R. Kreisberg,et al.  Pheochromocytoma: Clinical Diagnosis and Management , 1982, Southern medical journal.

[6]  G. Bohannan,et al.  Dielectric Behavior in an Oriented β-PVDF Film and Chain Reorientation Upon Transverse Mechanical Deformation , 2002 .

[7]  R. C. Thompson,et al.  Optical Waves in Layered Media , 1990 .

[8]  Jan Genzer,et al.  Journal of Polymer Science, Part B: Polymer Physics: Introduction , 2007 .

[9]  J. Mano,et al.  Characterization of poled and non-poled β-PVDF films using thermal analysis techniques , 2004 .

[10]  M. Born.  Principles of Optics : Electromagnetic theory of propagation , 1970 .

[11]  Max Born,et al.  Principles of optics - electromagnetic theory of propagation, interference and diffraction of light (7. ed.) , 1999 .

[12]  M. Teich,et al.  Fundamentals of Photonics , 1991 .

[13]  K. Matsushige,et al.  The II-I crystal transformation of poly(vinylidene fluoride) under tensile and compressional stresses , 1980 .

[14]  H. Unruh.  G. M. Sessler (Ed.): Electrets, Vol. 33 aus der Reihe: Topics in applied physics. Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York 1980. Preis: DM 118,—; US $ 66.10 , 1981 .

[15]  Pasqualina M. Sarro,et al.  Customized CMOS wavefront sensor , 2002, Optics + Photonics.

[16]  Qi Hong Wu,et al.  Birefringent Thin Films and Polarizing Elements , 1998 .

[17]  G. G. Stokes.  "J." , 1890, The New Yale Book of Quotations.

[18]  P. Connolly.  Clinical diagnostics opportunities for biosensors and bioelectronics. , 1995, Biosensors & bioelectronics.

[19]  R. Gregorio,et al.  Effect of crystallization temperature on the crystalline phase content and morphology of poly(vinylidene fluoride) , 1994 .

[20]  D. Bassett,et al.  Developments in crystalline polymers , 1982 .