Bio:

Loic Laplatine received the M.Eng. degree in physics from the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA), Toulouse, France, in 2010. He completed the Ph.D. degree at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in 2014 on surface plasmon resonance microscopy. In 2015, he joined the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, as a post-doctoral fellow and worked on the system-level integration of silicon photonic biosensors. In 2018, he joined the CEA-Leti, Grenoble, France, to develop silicon photonic olfactory sensors based on silicon nitride Mach-Zehnder Interferometers in collaboration with the startup Aryballe. Since 2020, he has been expanding the application range to gas and biodetection for pharmaceutical and environmental applications. His research interests include silicon photonic design, fabrication, characterization and automation, label-free biosensors, microfluidics and device prototyping.

Abstract:

Silicon photonics is now a mature technology for optical communications. This technology can also be used to produce sensors at low cost and high volume in CMOS foundries. Applications range from physical sensors such as lidars, temperature or wavelength trackers, to chemical sensors such as odor identification in air or contaminants detection in water. Mach-Zehnder Interferometers (MZI) have emerged as one of the best transducer components for high sensitivity and fast acquisition while only requiring off-the-shelf optoelectronics. At CEA-Leti, we have been developing a dedicated silicon nitride platform and system integration to address the need for low cost miniaturized sensors. After briefly describing how these sensors work, the talk will focus on two application cases :
1- Olfactory sensing in air (in collaboration with the startup Aryballe)
2- Biosensing in aqueous solutions for environmental monitoring