THz Tripod Metasurfaces for Sensing Applications: From the Basic, to More Elaborated Designs

In this work, we propose, design, and evaluate three types of : three types of metasurfaces using tripod-shaped unit cells when working as thin-film sensing devices. The three meta-atoms of the proposed metasensors are a simple solid tripod, a hollow tripod, and a hollow tripod structure with arms. The best design showed a mean numerical sensitivity of 1.42 x 10(-4) nm for extremely thin samples, meaning an improvement of 381% with respect to the initial designs. These results highlight the importance of using metastructures with complex geometries that enable high-intensity electric field distributions over the whole metasurface.