Sensing the Heavy Water Concentration in H2O-D2O Mixture by Solid-Solid Phononic Crystals

Abstract

Abstract In this study, a new method based on phononic crystals is presented to detect the concentration of heavy water (D2O) in the D2O-H2O mixture. The results have been obtained and analyzed in the concentration range of 0-10% and 90-100%. Proposed structure has been made of tungsten scatterers in an aluminum host. In order to detect the target material, a cavity region has been considered as a sound wave resonator in which the target material with different concentrations of D2O has been embedded in this area. By changing the concentration of the D2O in the H2O-D2O mixture, the resonance frequency has undergone a frequency shift. Each 1% change in D2O concentration in the H2O-D2O mixture, caused a frequency change of about 120 Hz. Finite element method (FEM) is used as a useful numerical method to calculate and analyze the natural frequencies and transmission spectrums of proposed sensor. The performance evaluation index shows high Q factor up to 1,475,758 and high sensitivity up to 13,075 which they are acceptable in sensing purpose. The other figure of merit indices related to detection performance also indicate the high-quality performance of designed sensor.