Metamaterials-enhanced terahertz time domain spectroscopy for sensing enhancement

Abstract

The rise in food poisoning outbreaks, coupled with the contamination of fresh seafood by biotoxins has called for a novel method to detect the impurities, including pesticides, in the food we consume.

One method is to perform a Terahertz Time-Domain Spectroscopy (THz-TDS) on the suspected samples to identify the impurities present. However, the detection sensitivity of THz-TDS is limited at present and is usually unable to detect impurities that are present in low concentration. Hence, in this project, we aim to use metamaterials in THz-TDS to enhance the detection sensitivity of such impurities.

In our analysis, the time domain result is Fast Fourier Transformed (FFT) to obtain the frequency-domain spectra. The enhancement in detection sensitivity will be investigated and proven by the increase in frequency shifts between the frequency- domain spectra obtained with and without the low concentration impurities (represented by analytes, which are 1mL of 5mg/mL glucose solution).