Plasmonic Perfect Absorber Utilizing Polyhexamethylene Biguanide Polymer for Carbon Dioxide Gas Sensing Application

Muhammad Irfan; Yousuf Khan; Atiq Ur Rehman; Naqeeb Ullah; Svetlana N Khonina; Nikolay L Kazanskiy; Muhammad A Butt

doi:10.3390/ma16072629

Plasmonic Perfect Absorber Utilizing Polyhexamethylene Biguanide Polymer for Carbon Dioxide Gas Sensing Application

Materials (Basel). 2023 Mar 26;16(7):2629. doi: 10.3390/ma16072629.

Authors

Muhammad Irfan¹, Yousuf Khan¹, Atiq Ur Rehman¹, Naqeeb Ullah¹, Svetlana N Khonina^{2

3}, Nikolay L Kazanskiy^{2

3}, Muhammad A Butt⁴

Affiliations

¹ Nanophotonics Research Group, Department of Electronic Engineering, Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences, Quetta 87300, Pakistan.
² Samara National Research University, 443086 Samara, Russia.
³ IPSI RAS-Branch of the FSRC "Crystallography and Photonics" RAS, 443001 Samara, Russia.
⁴ Institute of Microelectronics and Optoelectronics, Warsaw University of Technology, Koszykowa 75, 00-662 Warszawa, Poland.

Abstract

In this paper a perfect absorber with a photonic crystal cavity (PhC-cavity) is numerically investigated for carbon dioxide (CO₂) gas sensing application. Metallic structures in the form of silver are introduced for harnessing plasmonic effects to achieve perfect absorption. The sensor comprises a PhC-cavity, silver (Ag) stripes, and a host functional material-Polyhexamethylene biguanide polymer-deposited on the surface of the sensor. The PhC-cavity is implemented within the middle of the cell, helping to penetrate the EM waves into the sublayers of the structure. Therefore, corresponding to the concentration of the CO₂ gas, as it increases, the refractive index of the host material decreases, causing a blue shift in the resonant wavelength and vice versa of the device. The sensor is used for the detection of 0-524 parts per million (ppm) concentration of the CO₂ gas, with a maximum sensitivity of 17.32 pm (pico meter)/ppm achieved for a concentration of 366 ppm with a figure of merit (FOM) of 2.9 RIU^-1. The four-layer device presents a straightforward and compact design that can be adopted in various sensing applications by using suitable host functional materials.

Keywords: carbon dioxide sensor; lithium niobate-based sensing; perfect absorber; plasmonic gas sensor; polyhexamethylene biguanide polymer.

Grants and funding

The research was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation in the financing of new laboratories under the guidance of young scientists within the framework of the national Project “Science and Universities” (project FSSS-2021-0016) in the overview and comparative parts and under the FSRC “Crystallography and Photonics” of the Russian Academy of Sciences (the state task No. 007-GZ/Ch3363/26) in the part of sensing devices.