Work

Label-Free Glucose Sensing Using a High-Q Terahertz Metamaterial Absorber

Year: 2025

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: This work presents a highly sensitive terahertz (THz) metamaterial absorber tailored for glucose detection in aqueous environments. The absorber features a multi-resonant structure with four distinct absorption peaks at 2.02, 4.41, 5.06, and 5.39 THz, achieving absorption efficiencies of 99.8%, 99.2%, 96.4%, and 95.2%, respectively. Among these, the 5.06 THz resonance exhibits the highest quality factor of 265, making it ideal for high-resolution sensing applications. To evaluate its biosensing performance, a 1 micrometer thick analyte layer was modeled with refractive index values ranging from 1.3 3 (pure water) to 1.45 (30% glucose solution). The resulting resonance shift yielded a sensitivity of 262.5 GHz/RIU and a figure of merit (FOM) of 7.17, demonstrating the absorber's capability to detect subtle changes in glucose concentration. These results highlight the potential of the proposed design for non-invasive glucose monitoring and other biomedical sensing applications in the THz regime.

Source: IEEE Microwaves, Antennas, and Propagation Conference (MAPCON)

DOI: 10.1109/mapcon65020.2025.11426235

Authors: Afzaal Ahmad, Muhammad Zubair, Vimal Kumar Chaudhary, Jalil Ur-Rehman Kazim, Muhammad Imran, Qammer Abbasi

Institutions: University of Glasgow, University of Leicester

Language: English

Topic: Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications

Subfield: Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

Field: Materials Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: Commission on Higher Education, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Awards: APP17382: EPSRC-SFI: Active intelligent Reconfigurable surfaces for 6G wireless COMmunications (AR-COM), CHEDDAR: Communications Hub for Empowering Distributed clouD computing Applications and Research - TMF uplift, CHEDDAR: Communications Hub For Empowering Distributed ClouD Computing Applications And Research