On-chip readout plasmonic mid-IR gas sensor

Gas identification and concentration measurements are important for both understanding and monitoring a variety of phenomena from industrial processes to environmental change. Here a novel mid-IR plasmonic gas sensor with on-chip direct readout is proposed based on unity integration of narrowband spectral response, localized field enhancement and thermal detection. A systematic investigation consisting of both optical and thermal simulations for gas sensing is presented for the first time in three sensing modes including refractive index sensing, absorption sensing and spectroscopy, respectively. It is found that a detection limit less than 100 ppm for CO₂ could be realized by a combination of surface plasmon resonance enhancement and metal-organic framework gas enrichment with an enhancement factor over 8000 in an ultracompact optical interaction length of only several microns. Moreover, on-chip spectroscopy is demonstrated with the compressive sensing algorithm via a narrowband plasmonic sensor array. An array of 80 such sensors with an average resonance linewidth of 10 nm reconstructs the CO₂ molecular absorption spectrum with the estimated resolution of approximately 0.01 nm far beyond the state-of-the-art spectrometer. The novel device design and analytical method are expected to provide a promising technique for extensive applications of distributed or portable mid-IR gas sensor.