Design of metamaterial-based compact and highly sensitive microwave liquid sensor

This article presents the design of a compact and highly sensitive mu-negative metamaterial-based microwave sensor for liquid characterization. In the current state-of-the-art development, miniaturization and high sensitivity are the prime concern for designing microwave sensing devices. Hence, the liquid sensor has been developed with the aim to achieve compactness and high sensitivity. This has been realized by introducing a square spiral metamaterial configuration that aids to accomplish notable compactness of the device as well as establishes remarkable sensitivity within a small cross-sectional area. Initially, the sensing characteristic of the device has been verified using the least square method. It is followed by the development of two non-linear equations to calibrate the proposed sensor, which would help to calculate the permittivity of unknown analytes. The high sensitivity and the compactness of the proposed sensor make it an ideal candidate for chemical analysis in various applications.