Integrated fluorescent light source for optofluidic applications

This letter describes a simple fluidic light source for use “on-chip” in integrated microsystems. It demonstrates the feasibility of light sources based on liquid-core, liquid-cladding (L2) microchannel waveguides, with liquid cores containing fluorescent dyes. These fluorescent light sources, using both miscible and two-phase systems, are tunable in terms of the beam size, intensity and spectral content. The observed output intensity from fluorescent L2 light sources is comparable to standard fiber optic spectrophotometer light sources. Integration of fluorescent light sources during device fabrication removes both the need for insertion and alignment of conventional, optical-fiber light sources and the constraints on channel size imposed by fiber optics, albeit at the cost of establishing a microfluidic infrastructure.