High-sensitivity metamaterial sensor based on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) effect

Abstract We propose a metamaterial sensor based on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) effect, which is composed of two elliptical structures with splits. Based on the coupling of bright and dark modes, a low-loss transparent window is realized at 1.88 THz. Surface current distribution and equivalent circuit model are used to analyze the physical mechanism of the EIT effect. In addition, the sensitivity of the sensor is investigated for different thickness and refractive index for analyte. The simulation results show that when the analyte thickness is 15 μ m and the refractive index is between 1 and 1.5, the sensitivity of the sensor is as high as 450.7 GHz/RIU, and the figure of merit (FOM) value is 7.7. And when the refractive index of analyte is 1.5 and its thickness is between 0 and 5 μ m, the sensor can also be used for thickness sensing with a sensitivity of 40.8 GHz μ m −1 . In addition, the proposed metamaterial sensor can be used to simulate the detection of sodium chloride solution, and the sensitivity is 66.2 GHz/ mol d m 3 . These above features indicate that the proposed structure paves the way for designing high-sensitivity EIT sensors in the terahertz region, which plays important roles in promoting terahertz sensing and detection technology.