Enhancing terahertz molecular fingerprint detection by a dielectric metagrating

Terahertz (THz) sensing of molecular fingerprint enables wide applications in biomedicine and security detection. Conventional detection approaches face big barriers in trace analysis of analyte due to the difficulties of enhancing the broadband molecular absorption. In order to achieve strong broadband wave–matter interaction for the analyte, we propose a method based on THz wave angular scanning on a dielectric metagrating. In virtue of the guided-mode resonance, one can strengthen the local electric field in various trace-amount analytes by tuning the polarization and incident angle, which leads to significant enhancement on the broadband signal of molecular fingerprint. The study paves the way for more applications of THz trace-amount detection.