Versatile Terahertz Metamaterial Sensor for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

In this work, we propose a THz metamaterial for biomedical applications. The full vectorial finite element method is used to design and analyze the reported biosensor. The proposed sensor is based on increasing the confinement of the electric and magnetic fields at the analyte layer at the resonance frequency. Hence, any slight variation of the optical properties of the analyte sample (typically the refractive index) can be detected. We demonstrate the potential of using the reported sensor for hemoglobin (Hb) concentration and early cancer detection. The geometrical parameters are studied to maximize the sensor sensitivity of the symmetric and asymmetric designs. An absorptivity of 0.98 is achieved at 1.1 THz, which depends on the analyte sample refractive index. High sensor sensitivity of 1.08 GHz/g/dL is obtained with high Q-factor of 13.2 and FWHM (full width at half maximum) of 140 GHz through hemoglobin (Hb) concentration change from 5 g/dL to 20 g/dL. Further, an average sensitivity of 556.325 GHz/RIU is realized for cancer early detection for basal cell, breast cell, Jurkat cell and Cervical cell. Therefore, the proposed design is a good candidate for biomedical applications.