Abstract
A sensitive terahertz (THz) metamaterial sensor for the distinguishment of common additives in the food industry is proposed. The metamaterial sensor consists of an array of split ring resonator (SRR) with double tip ends. By checking resonate frequency shift of the sensor, the concentration and the type of the solution sample can be distinguished. The metamaterial sensor is fabricated on a quartz substrate, which is transparent for THz wave. The solutions with the concentration of 0.2, 0.4, 1.5, 2, 3 and 4 mg/ml have been measured by using a terahertz time domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS). The results illustrate that the proposed metamaterial sensor can detect the concentration of the solution sample, as low as 0.2 mg/ml. Meanwhile, different solutions with same concentration can also be clearly distinguished. Our study provides new insights for the application of terahertz metamaterial sensor based on SRR structure in the field of food safety.
In the past decades, THz-TDS has been widely used in the biological, chemical and food safety field
With the rapid development of the food industry and the progress of chemical synthesis technology, food additives are widely used in the worldwid
In this paper, a terahertz sensor based on metamaterial which is composed of an array of double-gap SRR structure with tip ends has been proposed. The properties of the sensor are studied both numerically and experimentally. Meanwhile, the electric field distribution of the sensor with tip end has been studied. The sensing capability of the metamaterial sensor for the distinguishment of IS, LC and TR has been investigated by using the THz-TDS technology. The rapid and real-time monitoring of IS, LC and TR have been demonstrated based on the proposed metamaterial sensor. This method has the advantage of simple operation and low cost, which provide an effective reference for realizing the application of metamaterial in the field of food safety.
The split ring resonator (SRR) with tip ends is selected as the metamaterial resonator element. Simulations were carried out by using Computer Software Technology (CST) Microwave Studio to study the high frequency properties of the metamaterial sensor. The schematic of the proposed metamaterial sensor is shown in

Fig. 1 The geometric diagram of the proposed metamaterial sensor based on SRR structure
图1 提出的基于开口谐振环结构的超材料传感器结构示意图
The simulation results of surface current and E-field distribution have been studied and shown in

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Fig. 2 The surface current and electric field profiles of SRR structure (a) with and (b) without tip ends, the red colored y-axis signifies the polarization direction of the incident electric field
图2 (a)有尖端和(b)没有尖端的开口谐振环结构表面电流和电场分布,红色y轴表示入射电场的极化方向
Then, the proposed metamaterial sensor based on SRR structure was fabricated by using semiconductor processing technology.

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Fig. 3 The optical microscopy images of the fabricated metamaterial sensor (a) array structure of SRR, (b) single structure of SRR
图3 加工的超材料传感器的光学显微图像(a)SRR的阵列结构,(b)SRR的单个结构
IS, LC and TR powder with a purity of 99.6% was purchased from Shanghai Macklin Biochemical Co., Ltd. The Deionized water was purchased form Chengdu Kelong Chemical Co., Ltd. Then, solutions to concentrations of 0.2 mg/ml, 0.4 mg/ml, 1.5 mg/ml, 2 mg/ml, 3 mg/ml and 4 mg/ml were obtained by mixing the IS, LC and TR powder and deionized water, respectively. We focused on these six solutions to concentrations ranging from 0.2 to 4 mg/ml because it was found that the solution was beginning to crystallize when the concentration is greater than 4 mg/ml, leading to an uneven sample film when the water is evaporated. When the concentration of solution was lower than 0.2 mg/ml, the sample thin film could not be detected due to the limited sensitivity of the proposed sensor and the limited frequency resolution of the TH-TDS.
The transmission spectra from 0.01~6 THz were obtained by using the TH-TDS provided by Neaspace Company, which supplies 0.01 THz resolution and 80dB dynamic range. The Ti:sapphire femtosecond laser was used to drive the THz-TDS system. The femtosecond laser beam was dived into pump and probe beam. The pump beam was incident on the photoconductive antenna to generate THz pulse. The generated THz pulse was collimated by parabolic mirrors and focused onto the measurement area by using the 4-methyl-1-pentene (TPX) lens. The proposed metamaterial sensor was placed in the measurement area. Then, the transmitted THz signal through the sensor was measured by electro-optic sampling technique based on ZnTe crystal using time delay between the probe beam and the generated THz pulse. The measurement system is shown in

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Fig. 4 (a) Sensor assembled with fixture, (b) measurement platform of the THz-TDS system
图4 (a) 与夹具组装的传感器, (b) THz-TDS系统测试平台
The whole SRR resonant unit can be regarded as an LC resonant circuit, the resonance frequency of which is defined as where C and L are the capacitance and inductance of the SRR metamaterial sensor, respectively. Our previous wor
To further characterize the SRR resonators and evaluate the property of the metamaterial sensor, the frequency-dependent transmission of the sensor has been simulated by using the Computer Software Technology (CST) Microwave Studio. The results show that all transmittance spectra of the sensor coated with samples are shifted toward lower frequency regime with the increase of the refractive index of samples. The gaps in SRR structure behave like capacitors in the LC circuit which have resonant frequencies depending on the refractive index of surrounding materials. Thus, it can be possible to detect the refractive index of sample coated on the metamaterial sensor by monitoring the resonance frequency shifts. In the simulation, samples with the same refractive index and different thicknesses have been used to represent the samples with different concentrations. The transmission spectra of metamaterial for different refractive indexes with the sample thickness of 0.4 μm are shown in

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Fig. 5 (a) Simulated transmission spectra of metamaterial sensor for different refractive index analyte with the thickness of 0.4 μm, (b) simulated transmission spectra of metamaterial sensor for different thickness analyte with the refractive index of 1.2
图5 (a)具有不同折射率,厚度为0.4 μm的分析物透射光谱仿真结果图,(b)不同厚度,折射率为1.2的分析物透射光谱仿真结果图

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Fig. 6 (a) and (b) represent the relationship between frequency shift and refractive index and the relationship between frequency shift and the thickness of sample film, respectively
图6 (a)和(b)分别代表了频率偏移与折射率之间的关系和频率偏移与样品薄膜厚度之间的关系
The concentration dependent characteristics of the fabricated SRR metamaterial sensor have been investigated in this section. As mentioned above, the metamaterial sensor is sensitive to the relative index and the thickness of the sample solution coated on the surface. The resonant frequency will get red shift when the relative index and thickness of the solution sample increase, which means the sensor can be used for detecting solution sample with different relative indexes and different concentrations.
The positions of resonant peaks’ shift as the concentrations of IS, LC, and TR solutions change, as shown in

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Fig. 7 (a), (b) and (c) represent the measured transmission spectra of inositol (IS), leucine (LC), and taurine (TR) with different concentrations, respectively
图7 (a),(b)和(c)分别代表测量得到的不同浓度的肌醇(IS)、亮氨酸(LC)和牛磺酸(TR)透射光谱图
For further study, the frequency shift values of the resonant peaks versus solution concentrations were plotted in
, | (1) |
where is the concentration of solution samples in mg/ml, k and m are the fitting coefficients. The fitting coefficients k and m for IS and LC solution sample are 4.71 and 10.98, 3.73 and 6.35, respectively. These results indicate that the concentration of solution samples could be predicted based on the different frequency shift, which means the quantitative analysis of sample could be achieved.

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Fig. 8 (a) and (b) represent the relationship between frequency shift and concentration of inositol (IS) and leucine (LC) solution changing from 0.2 to 4 mg/ml, respectively
图8 (a)和(b)分别表示肌醇(IS)和亮氨酸(LC)溶液浓度在0.2~4 mg/ml时对应的频率偏移关系图
In addition, selective detection of proposed metamaterial sensor for different samples with the same concentration has been studied, and the results were shown in

Fig. 9 The measured transmission spectra of inositol (IS), leucine (LC), and taurine (TR) with the solution concentration of 4 mg/ml
图9 测量得到的浓度为4 mg/ml的肌醇(IS)亮氨酸(LC)和牛磺酸(TR)透射光谱图
In short, we have proved the feasibility of detecting food additives based on a metamaterial sensor in the terahertz range both theoretically and experimentally. The common additives such as inositol(IS), LC and TR have been sensed as examples. The results show that the proposed metamaterial sensor can effectively detect concentration of LC as low as 0.2 mg/ml. The proposed detection method is based on the principle that samples of different thicknesses cause different frequency shifts, and it has its positive side and negative one. The positive side was that this approach could be universally applied to other food additives or even biological materials; while the negative one was that the precision and accuracy of the measured results were quite sensitive to the deposition of any non-target samples. Therefore, we must prevent the metamaterials from being contaminated by the non-target samples during the sample preparation and measurement. The detection method with the advantage of simple operation and low cost, which provides an effective reference for realizing the application of metamaterial in the field of food safety in the future.
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