All-metal terahertz metamaterial biosensor for protein detection

In this paper, a terahertz (THz) biosensor based on all-metal metamaterial is theoretically investigated and experimentally verified. This THz metamaterial biosensor uses stainless steel materials that are manufactured via laser-drilling technology. The simulation results show that the maximum refractive index sensitivity and the figure of merit of this metamaterial sensor are 294.95 GHz/RIU and 4.03, respectively. Then, bovine serum albumin was chosen as the detection substance to assess this biosensor’s effectiveness. The experiment results show that the detection sensitivity is 72.81 GHz/(ng/mm(2)) and the limit of detection is 0.035 mg/mL. This THz metamaterial biosensor is simple, cost-effective, easy to fabricate, and has great potential in various biosensing applications.