Ultra-Compact Effective Localized Surface Plasmonic Sensor for Permittivity Measurement of Aqueous Ethanol Solution With High Sensitivity

Abstract

In this article, we propose an ultra-compact microwave sensor based on an effective localized surface plasmon (ELSP) resonance for complex permittivity measurement of aqueous ethanol solution. The sensitivity of the sensor is dramatically enhanced thanks to the strong electromagnetic (EM) field coupling and enhancement of the ELSP in a deep-subwavelength scale. An equivalent circuit model of the sensor is established for analyzing the sensing mechanism, and the complex permittivity of the aqueous ethanol solution under test is extracted from the S-parameter through an empirical model. For demonstration, we successfully predict the complex permittivity of aqueous ethanol solution with an ethanol concentration of 0%–90% through simulations and experiments. This ELSP-based sensor features an ultra-compact size of $0.008\\lambda _{0}^{2}$ and high sensitivity of 0.57% and can find many applications (liquid permittivity measurement, liquid testing, and so on) in highly integrated systems.