A volume refractive index (RI) sensor based on the resonant optical tunneling effect (ROTE) is presented in this study. Compared with the classic volume RI sensing structure, the Fabry-Pérot (FP) etalon, the ROTE structure has a higher figure of merit (FOM) than that of the FP cavity with the same cavity length. The sensitivity of the ROTE structure is almost 20 times as high as that of the FP structure, although the Q value of the ROTE structure is lower than that of the FP etalon. Given the excellent volume RI sensing performance of the ROTE structure, three groups of normal human cells and corresponding cancer cells were tested for discrimination in this paper. According to experimental results, the reflection resonant dips of each type of human cancer cell showed a red shift with respect to corresponding normal cells at the same density. The RI sensor based on the ROTE has broad application prospects in biomedical, drug screening, and early cancer diagnoses.

在这项研究中提出了基于共振光隧穿效应（ROTE）的体积折射率（RI）传感器。与经典的体积RI感应结构Fabry-Pérot（FP）标准具相比，ROTE结构的品质因数（FOM）比具有相同腔长度的FP腔更高。ROTE结构的灵敏度几乎是FP结构的20倍，尽管QROTE结构的值低于FP标准具的值。鉴于ROTE结构具有出色的体积RI感测性能，本文对三组正常人细胞和相应的癌细胞进行了鉴别测试。根据实验结果，每种类型的人类癌细胞的反射共振骤降相对于相同密度的相应正常细胞均显示出红移。基于ROTE的RI传感器在生物医学，药物筛选和早期癌症诊断中具有广阔的应用前景。