A Dual-Band Carbon Dioxide Sensor Based on Metal–TiO2–Metal Metasurface Covered by Functional Material

Abstract

Highly sensitive and integrated optical multi-band CO2 sensors are significant at the shortwave infrared (SWIR) region and still lack research. A compact CO2 sensor composed of a Au-disk/TiO2-cylinder/Au-film metasurface coated by polyhexamethylene biguanide (PHMB) film, functioning at multi-band resonances as well as having high sensitivity to gas concentrations, is presented. It can be employed as a dual-band narrowband absorber, producing two strongly resonant modes at the SWIR region under a reflection-type framework of linearly polarized incidence. Moreover, the metasurface sensor possesses high refractive index sensitivity of 109.25 pm/ppm at around 1040 nm and 42.57 pm/ppm at around 1330 nm in the range of 200–600 ppm, which is suitable for detecting atmospheric CO2. Furthermore, the numerical results show that the sensitivity increases with a thicker PHMB film and optimizes at a thickness above 600 nm. The physical mechanism reveals that the higher order mode exhibits more extended near-field energy than the lower order mode, resulting in more sensitivity towards the surroundings. The design and results of our investigation show high-quality CO2 sensing performance which functions at dual spectrum bands in the SWIR region and is promising for integrated photonic applications.