Mid-infrared localized surface plasmon resonances in silicon-dioxide nanoantennas for ozone detection

Abstract

The detection of environmentally harmful gases and medical conditions depends heavily on gas sensing. The optical approach for sensing is particularly important among traditional sensing techniques since it is a quick, dependable, and extremely sensitive manner of sensing. The traditional noble metals utilized for plasmonic resonances suffer from high radiative losses as well as fabrication challenges, such as shifting the resonance positions into the mid-infrared regions and compatibility with the existing complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) manufacturing platform. In this study, we show that mid-infrared localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPR) can occur using thin SiO2 films. It is demonstrated that by simulating micrometer-sized antennas in a SiO2 chip, the mid-infrared LSPR can be further increased and spectrally extended to the mid-infrared spectrum. The optical gas sensor based on SiO2 is frequently used to detect a wide range of gases, including NH3 and O3. These gases often exhibit peak absorption in the infrared (IR) spectrum. Since SiO2 can also function as an infrared photodetector, we consider that our results will open the way for the direct integration of plasmonic sensors with the on-chip CMOS platform, considerably improving the prospect of the mass manufacture of high-performance plasmonic sensing systems. A silicon-dioxide nanoantenna is placed on a dielectric substrate to form the suggested nanoantenna. Different shapes and gap dimensions for resonant nanoantenna structures in the mid-infrared range are studied and numerically analyzed. The silicon-dioxide nanoantenna shows high localized field intensity in the midinfrared range.