Waveguide structures for efficient evanescent field coupling to zero mode waveguides

Abstract

The use of waveguide structures is examined to improve the efficiency of evanescent field coupling into zero-mode waveguides. Model calculations show that waveguide excitation using diffractive structures, increases the magnitude of the evanescent electric field by an order of magnitude compared to far field excitation of the evanescent field. A more efficient excitation of fluorescent markers used in e.g. sequencing instrumentation ultimately enables real-time single molecule detection using laser systems with moderate output power.

Keywords

• zero mode waveguide
• dna sequencing
• waveguide structure
• grating structure
• finite element methods