Feng Lan, Feng Luo, Pinaki Mazumder, Ziqiang Yang, Lin Meng, Zhengqiang Bao, Jun Zhou, Yaxin Zhang, Shixiong Liang, Zongjun Shi, Abdur Rauf Khan, Ziqi Zhang, Luyang Wang, Jing Yin, and Hongxin Zeng
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| Fig. 1 (a) Schematic diagram of the microfluidic sensor, (b) microscopic image of the meta-atoms, (c) resonant unit. |
We theoretically and experimentally demonstrate a label-free terahertz biosensor with ultrahigh sensitivity and distinctive discretion. By constructing a metal-air-metal (MAM) metamaterial perfect absorber (MPA) with a metallic paired-ring resonator array, a hollow microfluidic channel, and a backed reflector, a novel dual-band absorptive sensing platform is proposed in the THz range. The near field coupling by dipole-induced trapped modes and the magnetic momentum caused a vertical to transverse power flux that dramatically enhanced the electromagnetic field on top of the metasurface and in the microfluidic channel, respectively. Both the resonant modes exhibit perfect absorption and produce ultrahigh normalized sensitivities of 0.47/RIU (refractive index unit, RIU) and 0.51/RIU at 0.76 THz and 1.28 THz, respectively. Compared with conventional microfluidic sensors, the salient advantages of our design are the perfect spatial overlap for light-matter interaction and polarization insensitivity. Characterized by THz time domain spectroscopic absorption quantification measurements with different concentrations of bovine serum albumin (BSA), the proposed sensor exhibits promising applications in microfluidic biosensing.
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