A THz graphene metasurface for polarization selective virus sensing

Abstract

We propose a novel method to exploit chirality of highly sensitive graphene plasmonic metasurfaces to characterize complex refractive indexes (RI) of viruses by detecting the polarization state of the reflected electric fields in the THz spectrum. A dispersive graphene metasurface is designed to produce chiral surface currents to couple linearly polarized incident fields to circularly polarized reflected fields. The metasurface sensing sensitivity is the result of surface plasmon currents that flow in a chiral fashion with strong intensity due to the underlying geometrical resonance. Consequently, unique polarization states are observed in the far-field with the ellipticity values that change rapidly with the analyte’s RI. The determination of bimolecular RI is treated as an inverse problem in which the polarization states of the virus is compared with a pre-calculated calibration model that is obtained by full-wave electromagnetic simulations. We demonstrate the polarization selective sensing method by RI discrimination of three different types of Avian Influenza (AI) viruses including H1N1, H5N2, and H9N2 is possible. Since the proposed virus characterization method only requires determination of the polarization ellipses including its orientation at monochromatic frequency, the required instrumentation is simpler compared to traditional spectroscopic methods which need a broadband frequency scan.

Artificial Surfaces and Media for Electromagnetic Absorption and Interference Shielding

“…Ever since, the design of PMAs has attracted significant attention ranging from microwave to optical frequencies [112,113]. Apart from resonant absorption characteristics, the plasmonic effects also provide tremendous near field enhancement to improve the efficiency of solar cells [114], support for sensing [31], and enhanced thermal emission and photo-detection [115].…”

“…The applications include RCS reduction and stealth [29], EMI shielding [12,13], sensing [30][31][32][33], terahertz imaging [34][35][36], energy harvesting, etc. A representative modern application of metamaterial absorbers may be the enhanced isolation in the multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system [37,38], as depicted in Figure 1(b).…”

Colon Cancer Detection by Designing and Analytical Evaluation of a Water-Based THz Metamaterial Perfect Absorber

“…This allows for high precision of diagnosis. Literature on the THz metamaterial has been reported using optical waveguides [11]- [14], slow light devices [15]- [18], optical buffers [19]- [21], switching [22]- [24], Optical detection [25]- [30] such as cancer [31]- [33] and virus detection [34]- [38] thermo-optical modulators [39]- [41], opto-chemical sensors [30]- [46], cloaking devices [47], [48], optical sensors [36]- [52], etc.…”

An infrared energy harvester based on radar cross-section reduction of chiral metasurfaces through phase cancellation approach

“…In the receiving mode, these trapped plasmon modes can be exploited by either dissipating the incident energy in the form of metallic losses as in absorbers, cloaking and stealth applications 36 , 37 or by harvesting it for renewable energy 38 . Since the resonant response strongly depends on the host dielectric material, the plasmonic metasurface have been considered in sensing 39 , 40 and photo–detection 41 , 42 . The recently proposed chiral metasurfaces 43 – 45 allow disproportionate absorption of orthogonal electric field components leading to the observance of linear and circular dichroism at THz frequencies.…”