Development of a photonic crystal fiber for THz wave guidance and environmental pollutants detection

Abstract

In recent years, photonic crystal fiber (PCF) in the THz regime has gained popularity very swiftly for wave guidance and sensing applications. The optical properties of PCF can be controlled by the fine tuning of the geometrical parameters. In this context, PCF geometry has been developed for THz wave propagation as well as for environmental pollutants sensing applications. The proposed PCF structure contains a circular manner sectored cladding and square shaped core which is inserted by four square lattices. The finite element method based COMSOL multiphysics v.5.3a software has been used to design and characterize the optical properties rigorously for both applications. Numerical outcomes of developed PCF have significantly improved in both cases because of strategic geometry selection and parameters optimization. The simulated results render high sensitivity of 90 ± 1% for all the tested analytes at optimum condition, besides, ultra-low effective material loss (EML) of 0.009 cm−1 and flattened dispersion of ±0.05 ps/THz/cm are obtained at wave guiding environment. Moreover, implementation possibilities in the existing fabrication environment, physical attributes and comparative performance analysis are also stated in this article.