Design and Numerical Analysis of Hyperbolic Metamaterial Based Ultrasensitive E. Coli Sensor

TL;DR

This paper presents a hyperbolic metamaterial-based E. Coli sensor with ultra-high sensitivity, utilizing Ag-Al2O3 layers and finite-difference time-domain analysis to detect bacteria through resonance wavelength shifts.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel hyperbolic metamaterial structure achieving unprecedented sensitivity for E. Coli detection, surpassing existing sensors.

Findings

Sensitivity of 9000 nm per bacteria achieved

Hyperbolic metamaterial enables bulk plasmon polaritons

Sensor operates in visible to near-infrared wavelengths

Abstract

We proposed an extremely sensitive \textit{E. Coli} sensor based on a hyperbolic metamaterial structure combining ultra-thin Ag-Al$_2$O$_3$ layers to minimize metallic optical loss. The principle relied on detecting the change in the resonance wavelength due to the interaction of bacteria with the surrounding aqueous environment by utilizing the finite-difference time-domain numerical technique. Our proposed hyperbolic metamaterial \textit{E. Coli} sensor operated in the range from visible to near-infrared wavelengths exhibiting strong bulk plasmon polaritons at the hyperbolic regime ($\lambda \geq$ 460 nm). An anisotropic hyperbolic range was obtained theoretically by solving the effective medium theory. An outstanding sensitivity of 9000 nm per bacteria was achieved for a bulk plasmon-polariton mode. The hyperbolic metamaterial was the origin of obtaining such extremely high sensitivity; no bulk plasmon polaritons were found without hyperbolic metamaterial. We analyzed the effect of different shapes in two-dimensional Ag differential grating on sensing performance. Additionally, we compared the performance parameters of our proposed \textit{E. Coli} sensor with recently demonstrated sensors. Our proposed hyperbolic metamaterial structure has the potential as a highly sensitive \textit{E. Coli} sensor operating in a wide range of wavelengths for label-free detection.