Optical Characterization of Different Scattering Area on ZnO Nanorods Coated Glass Substrate Based on Side Coupling Technique for Sensing Application

Abstract

An optical characterization of the proposed sensing scheme comprised of ZnO nanorods coated glass substrate based on side coupling technique for different scattering areas is reported. The glass substrate was coated with a highly responsive nanomaterial which is Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nanorods using a hydrothermal technique. The scattering area were varied into five samples 0.016m2, 0.018m2, 0.020m2, 0.022m2 and 0.024m2. The samples was exposed to a range of RI solutions spanning from a concentration of 0% to 100%. Based on experimental results, the sample with an area of 0.022m2 exhibited outstanding characteristics in most of the performance parameters such as $\alpha $ , $\gamma $ , output light intensity and sensitivity towards different RI solution. The sample demonstrates a notably elevated level of light intensity and output voltage in comparison to the closest best samples by a factor of 1.1. Besides it produced a linearity of 97.5% and sensitivity of 0.0125V/%. The proposed sensor exploits the visible light using the side coupling technique applied on the glass surface that was coated with Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nanorods to enhance the output coupling voltage. It effectively employed the scattering and surface absorption properties to interact with different refractive index solutions

Keywords

• ZnO nanorods
• glass substrate
• scattering area
• refractive index
• side coupling