High-Sensitivity Terahertz Biosensor Based on Plasmon-Induced Transparency Metamaterials

Abstract

This paper presents a metamaterial biosensor composed of dual-cut wires (DCWs) and quadruple split-ring resonators (QSRs), achieving polarization-independent plasmon-induced transparency (PIT) effects in the terahertz range. By leveraging the coupling between bright and dark modes, we observe a transparent window with a minimal loss at 1.22 THz. We investigate the physical mechanism of the PIT effect by analyzing the surface current distribution and electric fields. Simulations reveal that the PIT transparency shows a peak shift of up to 146.7 GHz with an analyte thickness of 14 μm. Moreover, as the refractive index of the analyte increases from 1.0 to 1.6, the biosensor’s theoretical sensitivity is calculated to be 281.25 GHz/RIU. Furthermore, we explore the application of the proposed DCW/QSR biosensor for the detection of bacteriophage viruses. Our simulation results demonstrate that the DCW/QSR biosensor serves as an effective sensing platform for detecting viruses such as PRD1 and MS2. These findings underscore the potential of our high-sensitivity metamaterial biosensor, which holds great promise in the field of biosensing, offering a practical and cost-effective approach to label-free biomedical detection.