Semiconductor plasmonic gas sensor using on-chip infrared spectroscopy

In this paper, we take a novel approach in on-chip optical sensing of gases. Gases have conventionally been optically sensed using refractive index, which is a non-ideal method because of the difficulty in differentiating gases with very similar refractive indices. Infrared (IR) absorption spectra on the other hand have characteristic peaks in the fingerprint region that allow identifying the analyte. Highly doped n-type Indium Arsenide was used to design a plasmonic slot waveguide, and a dispersion analysis was carried out using the finite element method to study the effect of dopant concentration and waveguide geometry on the guided modes. Finite-difference time domain was used to simulate the transmission spectrum of the waveguide with air, methane and octane and the characteristic peaks in the IR spectra showed up strongly. This is a promising versatile method that can sense any IR-active gas.