A new microspectrometer architecture that uses compact, disc-shaped resonators could address the challenges of integrated lab-on-chip sensing systems that now require a large, off-chip spectrometer to achieve high resolution.

Spectrometers have conventionally been expensive and bulky bench-top instruments used to detect and identify the molecules inside a sample by shining light on it and measuring different wavelengths of the emitted or absorbed light. Previous efforts toward miniaturizing spectrometers have reduced their size and cost, but these reductions have typically resulted in lower-resolution instruments.

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