THz sensing of CoViD-19 disinfecting products using photonic crystal fiber

Abstract

Methanol and Benzene are two volatile impurities that can be adulterate into Ethanol to make hand sanitizes, putting the disinfection practices at risk. In this paper, an optical fiber-based Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF) sensor is developed to offer low loss and increased sensitivity concurrently in order to detect volatile contaminants combined with Ethanol in an efficient and safe manner. In the PCF, both the core and cladding area, rectangular air holes are utilized, and an absorbing layer, PML, is imposed to investigate a variety of optical characteristics. To quantify the exhibition of the recommended fiber sensor, Finite Element Method (FEM) framework is utilized. The simulation results on the proposed sensor model exhibit very gratifying results on the Relative Sensitivity (RS) as 99.15%, 99.36% and 99.41% confinement loss as 5 × 10−17 dB/cm, 2 × 10−16 dB/cm and 1.17 × 10−17 dB/cm, EML as 0.00065 cm−1, 0.00085 cm−1 and 0.00068 cm−1 for Ethanol, Methanol and Benzene, respectively at 2.2 THz frequency regime. Physical insights into the proposed fiber were also highlighted. The current manufacturing techniques are capable of producing the sensor we proposed. This PCF sensor is applicable to a larger variety of chemical, gas, and bio-sensing applications.