REPUBLIC OF SERBIA

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

www.mod.gov.rs

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

Material Resources Sector

Defensive Technologies Department

Military Technical Institute

www.vti.mod.gov.rs

INVESTIGATION OF POSSIBLE SUPERSTRUCTURES FOR NANOAPERTURE ARRAY-BASED PLASMONIC SENSORS FOR SIMULTANEOUS DETECTION OF MULTIPLE DANGEROUS SUBSTANCES

DRAGAN TANASKOVIĆ

IHTM – Centre of Microelectronic Technologies, University of Belgrade, Serbia dragant@nanosys.ihtm.bg.ac.rs

OLGA JAKŠIĆ

IHTM – Centre of Microelectronic Technologies, University of Belgrade, Serbia olga@nanosys.ihtm.bg.ac.rs

MARKO OBRADOV

IHTM – Centre of Microelectronic Technologies, University of Belgrade, Serbia marko.obradov@nanosys.ihtm.bg.ac.rs

ZORAN JAKŠIĆ

IHTM – Centre of Microelectronic Technologies, University of Belgrade, Serbia, jaksa@nanosys.ihtm.bg.ac.rs

Abstract: Monitoring of dangerous substances, including toxic and explosive materials in trace amounts is one of the primary targets of the CBRNe (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive) protection. The goal is to detect and recognize warfare agents and to obtain approximate information about their concentration. Hazard identification is critical in field work for the implementation of appropriate protective measures, but currently this process requires sophisticated equipment and complex lab analysis. Since it cannot be known in advance which warfare agent will be used, one has to simultaneously check for different possible substances. The usual approach is to utilize an array of different sensors, each dedicated to a single agent. The aim of this paper is to analyze possible nanoplasmonic sensor with high sensitivity and custom-designed spectral selectivity convenient for simultaneous detection of multiple warfare agents. A new simple geometry of nanoplasmonic metamaterial sensor is proposed where the basic metamaterial fishnet structure (a metal-dielectric-metal sandwich with rectangular openings) is modified by superposing additional subwavelength patterns. Thus a unit cell superstructure is obtained with multiple tailorable spectral peaks that increase the selectivity at different wavelengths. Finite elements method was used for simulations of the proposed sensor. Our results show that selectivity can be tuned by modifying geometry at deep subwavelength scale.

Keywords: plasmonic sensors,  metamaterials, chemical sensing, CBRNe threats.