THz spectroscopic sensing of liquid chemicals using hollow-core anti-resonant fiber

Abstract

Research on terahertz (THz) spectrum is encountering an enormous booming due to its inherent and promising applications. In recent years, an utmost interest shown by the researchers towards a hollow-core anti-resonant fiber (HC-ARF) based THz bio-sensor because of its sublime sensing performance. In this paper, Zeonex based five-circular cladding tube hollow-core node-less negative-curvature fiber (HC-NNCF) has been proposed for sensing of chemical specimens in THz frequency range. By filling the proposed HC-NNCF sensor with targeted specimens of different refractive indices such as water (n = 1.330), ethanol (n = 1.354), and benzene (n = 1.366), the sensing characteristics of the sensor are numerically investigated using full vectorial finite-element-method (FEM) based COMSOL software. The simulation results show that the proposed HC-NNCF sensor exhibits a total propagation loss magnitude of 10−01 dB/m and a sensitivity response of 98.90%, 99.04%, and 98.90% for water, ethanol, and benzene, respectively, at 1 THz operating frequency. The practical implementation of this propose HC-NNCF sensor is feasible by the existing fabrication methodology. Consequently, the proposed terahertz sensor can be a promising candidate in food, biomedical, and industrial chemical research for opto-fluidic sensing applications.