Highly Sensitive Salinity and Temperature Sensor Using Tamm Resonance

In this paper, a Tamm plasmon resonance-based sensor is theoretically studied to calculate the salinity of seawater as well as a temperature sensor based on photonic crystals. The transfer matrix method (TMM) is used to systematically study and analyze the reflected s-polarized electromagnetic waves from the sensing structure. The proposed structure composes of prism/Au/water/(Si/SiO2)(N)/Si. The sensitivity, figure-of-merit, quality factor, and detection limit of the sensors are improved by optimizing the thickness of the seawater layer, incident angle, salinity concentration, and temperature. The proposed salinity sensor records a very high sensitivity of 8.5 x 10(4) nm/RIU and quality factor of 3 x 10(3), and a very low detection limit of 10(-7) nm. Besides, the suggested temperature sensor achieves high sensitivity (from 2.8 to 10.8 nm/degrees C), high-quality factor of 3.5 x 10(3), and a very low detection limit of 3 x 10(-7) nm. These results indicate that the proposed sensor is a strong candidate for salinity and temperature measurements.

Automated summary

A Tamm plasmon resonance-based salinity sensor and a temperature sensor based on photonic crystals were studied, with optimized parameters to improve sensor performance. The proposed sensors exhibit high sensitivity and low detection limits for salinity and temperature measurements.