Engineering Fano-Resonant Hybrid Metastructures with Ultra-High Sensing Performances

Metamaterials-based sensors are of primary interest in physics, materials science, medicine, and biophysics thanks to their ability to detect very tiny amount of molecules spread into a medium. Here, a metastructure utilizing the epsilon near zero (epsilon(NZ)) and Fano-Rabi physics is engineered to design a system with ultra-high sensitivity. So far, a dedicated study of such systems has been missing. In this work, the authors report the results of their efforts to fill the gap by considering a metasurface, designed as a periodical array of rings with a cross in their center, placed on top of a silver (Ag) and zinc oxide (ZnO) epsilon near-zero optical nanocavity (epsilon(NZ)-ONC) metamaterial. The accurate selection of the metasurface parameters allows the design of a sensor exhibiting an extremely high sensitivity of about 16 000 and 21 000 nm RIU-1 depending on incoming polarization. This work paves the way for the development of novel groundbreaking devices for biomedical and environmental application based on plasmonic and photonic design principles.

Automated summary

The researchers report the design of a metamaterial-based sensor capable of detecting small amounts of molecules in a medium. By accurately selecting the parameters of the metamaterial, a highly sensitive sensor was developed. This work paves the way for the development of novel devices for biomedical and environmental applications.