HR-Si prism coupled tightly confined spoof surface plasmon polaritons mode for terahertz sensing

We report a high-resistivity silicon (HR-Si) prism coupled terahertz (THz) spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) on flat subwavelength metasurface. Using a high refractive index prism as an external coupler, a more tightly confined SSPPs mode can be excited in a smaller resonant cavity, leading to strong light-matter interaction. Besides, theoretical analysis and experimental results have both indicated that the SSPPs resonance response to the filling patterns of analyte in the resonant cavity are quite different. In particular, we have found that the interaction between analyte and SSPPs wave can be maximized when the analyte filled with the whole resonant cavity and a higher sensitivity for THz sensing can be obtained. A high sensitivity varied from 0.31 THz/RIU to 0.85 THz/RIU is predicted. Furthermore, these SSPPs modes exhibit high Q-factor, and characteristic spectra of water caused by surface plasmon resonance (SPR) are observed, which is significant in promoting the THz-SPR sensing of polar liquids or aqueous analytes with THz metasurfaces. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement