Terahertz-based biosensing technology for multi-disease detection: Cancer, Malaria, Bacillus Virus, and Tuberculosis diagnosis

An exceptionally sensitive narrowband metamaterial (MTM) biosensor for multi-disease diagnosis is proposed and evaluated through simulation studies. The presented sensor incorporates a polyimide dielectric layer enclosed between an aluminum base and metallic patches on top. The analyte sample is applied over the metallic patch, resulting in a peak resonance exhibiting significant absorption. The optical characteristics of the analyzed substance influence the peak response frequencies. Consequently, the designed sensor can effectively among various types of multi-disease detection: Cancer, Malaria, Bacillus Virus, and Tuberculosis Diagnosis. The full vector finite element method (FEM) is employed to investigate the impact of the structural characteristics and to optimize the sensitivity of the sensor. The sensor achieves optimal absorption at 2.054 THz, with an absorption efficiency of 96.9%. The presented sensor exhibits an elevated sensitivity of 5002 GHz/RIU for Jurkat cancerous cells, significantly surpassing those reported in existing studies, in addition to a quality factor of 26.2 within the range of frequencies of 1.0 THz to 3.0 THz. Moreover, the absorber maintains stable performance at incidence angles up to 80°, achieving an absorptivity exceeding 85%. In addition, the proposed sensor remains unaffected by polarization. Key characteristics of the absorber include its compact structure, simplistic design, tuneability, polarization resilience, extremely narrow absorption bandwidth (BW), outstanding sensitivity, superior figure of merit (FOM), and remarkable quality factor (Q), making it highly suitable for applications such as detection: Cancer, Malaria, Bacillus Virus, and Tuberculosis Diagnosis.