This dissertation presents a method for fabricating integrated hollow and solid optical waveguides on planar substrates. These waveguides are antiresonant reflecting optical waveguides (ARROWs), where high-index cladding layers confine light to hollow cores through optical interference. Hollow waveguides that can be filled with liquids or gases are an important new building block for creating highly-integrated optical sensors. The method developed for fabricating these integrated waveguides employs standard processes and materials used in the microelectronics industry, allowing for parallel, low-cost fabrication. Dielectric cladding layers are deposited on a silicon wafer using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). After the lower cladding layers have been deposited, a sacrificial material is deposited and patterned using photolithography to produce the hollow-core shape. After the sacrificial cores are defined, they are coated with additional PECVD dielectric layers to form the sides and tops of the waveguides. Integrated solid-core waveguides can be easily created by etching a ridge into the top dielectric cladding layer. Finally, the ends of the sacrificial cores are exposed and removed with an acid solution, resulting in hollow waveguides. Improved optical performance for integrated ARROW platforms can be achieved by only using a single over-coating for the cladding on the sides and top of the hollow waveguide. Such a structure resulted in 70% improvement in optical throughput for the platforms and increased sensitivity for optical manipulation and fluorescence detection of single particles, including viruses. Reduced loss for the hollow waveguides can be obtained by surrounding the core with a terminal layer of air on the sides and top of the waveguide. Such devices were created by forming the hollow waveguides on top of a pedestal on the silicon substrate. This process produces the ideal geometry for hollow ARROW waveguides, and loss measurements of waveguides with air-filled cores had loss coefficients of 1.54/cm, which is the lowest achieved for air-core ARROWs.

Lab-on-a-chip devices, also known as micro total analysis systems (μTAS), are implementations of chemical analysis systems on microchips. These systems can be fabricated using standard thin film processing techniques. Microfluidic and nanofluidic channels are fabricated in this work through sacrificial etching. Microchannels are fabricated utilizing cores made from AZ3330 and SU8 photoresist. Multi-channel electroosmotic (EO) pumps are evaluated and the accompanying channel zeta potentials are calculated. Capillary flow is studied as an effective filling mechanism for nanochannels. Experimental departure from the Washburn model is considered, where capillary flow rates lie within 10% to 70% of theoretical values. Nanochannels are fabricated utilizing cores made from aluminum, germanium, and chromium. Nanochannels are made with 5 μm thick top layers of oxide to prevent dynamic channel deformation. Nanochannel separation schemes are considered, including Ogston sieving, entropic trapping, reptation, electrostatic sieving, and immutable trapping. Immutable trapping is studied through dual-segment nanochannels that capture analytes that are too large to pass from one channel into a second, smaller channel. Polymer nanoparticles, Herpes simplex virus type 1 capsids, and hepatitis B virus capsids are trapped and detected. The signal-to-noise ratio of the fluorescently-detected signal is shown to be greater than 3 for all analyte concentrations considered.