Photonic Needles for Light Delivery in Deep Tissue-like Media

Romy Fain; Felippe Barbosa; Jaime Cardenas; Michal Lipson

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-05746-7

Photonic Needles for Light Delivery in Deep Tissue-like Media

Sci Rep. 2017 Jul 17;7(1):5627. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-05746-7.

Authors

Romy Fain^{1

2}, Felippe Barbosa³, Jaime Cardenas³, Michal Lipson^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA. rmf98@cornell.edu.
² Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10025, USA. rmf98@cornell.edu.
³ Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10025, USA.
⁴ Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA. ml3745@columbia.edu.
⁵ Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10025, USA. ml3745@columbia.edu.

Abstract

We demonstrate a new platform for minimally invasive, light delivery probes leveraging the maturing field of silicon photonics, enabling massively parallel fabrication of photonic structures. These Photonic Needles probes have sub-10 μm cross-sectional dimensions, lengths greater than 3 mm-surpassing 1000 to 1 aspect ratio, and are released completely into air without a substrate below. We show the Photonic Needles to be mechanically robust when inserted into 2% agarose. The propagation loss of these waveguides is low-on the order of 4 dB/cm.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't