M. Ifaz Ahmad Isti

This letter presents low-loss monolithic Barium Titanium Oxide (BaTiO3), hereafter referred to as BTO, waveguides fabricated on a Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform, using a novel measurement approach based on optical back-scattering reflectometry (OBR). Utilizing this method, a low average propagation loss of 0.7 dB/cm was achieved for a straight waveguide which, to our knowledge, is the lowest propagation loss reported to date based on long BTO ridge-waveguides. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) highlight the smooth sidewalls responsible for lowering the waveguide loss. Design simulations and fabrication processes are presented, followed by optical characterization.

In this work, a triple-band perfect metamaterial absorber (MA) in the terahertz (THz) regime is demonstrated for different biochemical sensing applications. The metasurface’s unit cell is made up of a distinct metallic gear-shaped core with eight identical teeth and two concentric circular rings on the top layer. Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method-based software is utilized for modeling and numerical analysis, and a genetic algorithm (GA) is employed to optimize some geometric parameters of the absorber. The proposed MA shows almost 100% absorption in the frequency range from 0.5 to 4.5 THz. The MA becomes almost insensitive to polarization angle when the number of gear-tooth has been increased. Resonance frequencies can be tweaked by adjusting the top layer’s geometric parameters while maintaining the absorption constant. The influence of different metals and forms in the top layer, such as solid and hollow circular metallic cores, on absorption spectra is also illustrated in this paper. The modelled MA can detect glucose, ethanol, oils, and cancer cell (BCC) by changing the resonance frequency and peak absorption of the spectra due to the variation in refractive index (RI) of the sample. When detecting ethanol, the absorber achieves a maximum sensitivity and figure of merit (FOM) of 56.67 THz/RIU and 358.7 RIU^-1 respectively. In addition, effects of incident angle of light and bending of MA on absorption are analyzed in this study. With this unique feasible design, structural tunability and high sensitivity, the proposed absorber exhibits good promise in detecting biochemicals in THz region.

In this paper,a polarization-maintaining single-mode rectangular-shaped hollow-core waveguide with four segmented air cladding in the terahertz (THz) regime is presented for detecting various toxic industrial chemicals. A new type of injection moldable cyclic olefin copolymer, commercially named as TOPAS is used as the base fiber material for its high optical transmission and high resistance to other chemicals. The finite element method with a perfectly matched layer as the boundary condition is employed for numerical explorations. The proposed sensor exhibits ultra-high relative sensitivity of 99.73% and ultra-low effective material loss of 0.007 cm ^-1 at 1.6 THz frequency for Toluene in y polarization. This sensor also evinces a high birefringence of 4.16×10 ^-3 at 1.6 THz frequency. A maximum V parameter of 2.224 has been found at 2.2 THz which ensures the single-mode propagation of light. The sensor shows a very low confinement loss of 3.2×10 ^-11 dB/m and a high numerical aperture of 0.3574 at 1.6 THz frequency for Hydrogen Sulfide. This paper also concentrates on other important design parameters such as bending loss, mode field radius, beam divergence and effective area for serviceability of the sensor in the THz region. This sensor can be a very good candidate for various chemical detection as well as other applications in the terahertz regime.