A portable
waveguide sensor having one or more gratings. In one embodiment, the sensor has a
waveguide, wherein a plurality of grooves imprinted onto the
waveguide form a Bragg
grating. The surface of the grooves has a functional layer adapted to bind a substance of interest, e.g., a biological
pathogen. When the
pathogen binds to the functional layer, the binding shifts the spectral reflection band corresponding to the Bragg
grating such that a probe light previously reflected by the
grating now passes through the grating, thereby indicating the presence of the
pathogen. In another embodiment, the sensor has a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI), one arm of which has a
resonator formed by two Bragg gratings. The surface of the
resonator between the gratings has a functional layer whereas the Bragg gratings themselves do not have such a layer. Due to multiple reflections within the
resonator, light coupled into the MZI interacts with the bound pathogen over a relatively large effective propagation length, which results in a relatively large
differential phase shift and therefore advantageously high sensitivity to the pathogen.