Effective Sensing Volume of Terahertz Metamaterial with Various Gap Widths

We studied experimentally and theoretically the vertical range of the confined electric field in the gap area of metamaterials, which was analyzed for various gap widths using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. We measured the resonant frequency as a function of the thickness of poly(methyl methacrylate) in the range 0 to 3.2 µm to quantify the effective detection volumes. We found that the effective vertical range of the metamaterial is determined by the size of the gap width. The vertical range was found to decrease as the gap width of the metamaterial decreases, whereas the sensitivity is enhanced as the gap width decreases due to the highly concentrated electric field. Our experimental findings are in good agreement with the finite-difference time-domain simulation results. Finally, a numerical expression was obtained for the vertical range as a function of the gap width. This expression is expected to be very useful for optimizing the sensing efficiency.