High Sensitive Optical Pressure Sensor Using Nano-Scale Plasmonic Resonator and Metal-Insulator-Metal Waveguides

We propose a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structure consisting of a resonator and surface plasmon polariton (SPP) waveguides. By increasing the pressure, the resonator further deforms. Applying a maximum pressure of 6.2 MPa on the proposed device, a blue shift of 150 nm in the resonant wavelength is computed. Under the above mentioned pressure, the corresponding shift is linearly proportional to the pressure variation in a wide range of wavelength. This optical pressure sensor has a high sensitivity of 24 nm/MPa which makes it very suitable candidate for mechanical, electrical, biological, and biomedical engineering applications. The proposed device is simulated using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method.