Hexagonal core photonic crystal fiber optical sensor: the analysis of design and performance improvement for alcohols sensing in THz wave propagation

This research explains the advancement and characterization of a highly sensitive hexagonal photonic crystal fiber (H-PCF) optical alcohol sensor in the terahertz range, with an emphasis on improving its capabilities using innovative materials and design. In this instance, the PCF’s core is exposed to the analyte’s flow in order to facilitate detection. This newly developed sensor’s sensing capabilities are carefully investigated using perfectly matched layer (PML) boundary conditions and the fully vectoral finite element method (FV-FEM), facilitated by the COMSOL Multiphysics software. According to the results of the FV-FEM numerical analysis, the proposed optical H-PCF sensor exhibited very high relative sensitivities of 90.65 %, 93.20 %, 93.95 %, and 94.42 % for four alcohols at 1.8 terahertz, namely, ethanol (n=1.354), propanol (n=1.387), butanol (n=1.399), and pentanol (n=1.4072) respectively. Moreover, at 1.8 terahertz (THz), the low confinement losses are 2.11×10-9 dB/m, 9.66×10-11 dB/m, 1.044×10-11 dB/m, 2.66×10-11 dB/m and correspondingly, effective material losses are 0.013497 cm-1, 0.01089 cm-1, 0.010087 cm-1, and 0.009588 cm-1 for similar alcohols. Furthermore, this article provides a brief description of the effective area, effective refractive index, and power fraction. Many contemporary technologies can be used to create this suggested sensor. In addition, let’s anticipate that our sensor will work well for applications in the food and medical sectors to determine the amount of alcohol in different kinds of drinks and beverages. It will also be highly effective in biomedical sectors, public health care, industrial settings, material science, nano-optics, and other terahertz waveguide technology communication domains