Detection of Harmful Chemical Compounds in Plastic Products Using a High‐Sensitivity Photonic Crystal‐Based Sensor

The use of plastics can be dangerous due to the numerous industrial chemicals they contain. Di(2‐ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), bisphenol A (BPA), and bisphenol S (BPS) are three detrimental organic chemicals that are used in the plastic industry. In this work, a highly sensitive photonic crystal (PCL) sensor is theoretically proposed and numerically simulated as a detector for DEHP, BPA, and BPS organic chemicals. The proposed PCL is a 1D that has the structure (GaAs/Si3N4/TiN)N/cavity layer/(GaAs/Si3N4/TiN)N, where N is the number of unit cells (UCs). The DEHP, BPA, and BPS analytes are assumed to be separately infiltrated into the cavity layer between two equal numbers of the UCs. The transmission spectra of the PCL are studied using the transfer matrix (TrMx) technique. The most important performance parameter is sensitivity so we have focused on it. A considerable sensitivity enhancement is obtained by raising the defect layer thickness and incidence angle. High sensitivities of 2350.51, 2168.45, and 2042.08 nm RIU−1 are obtained for DEHP, BPA, and BPS, respectively. In the results obtained, the way can be paved for a simple technique to detect chemical compounds.