近年来, 太赫兹技术得到迅速发展, 在通信、反恐、检测和医药等领域展现了广泛的应用潜力。尤其是许多生物分子和材料在太赫兹波段存在特征的吸收光谱, 而且太赫兹波能量低损伤小等特点, 使得太赫兹生化传感器越来越受到关注。然而, 由于太赫兹波的波长较长与生物分子等的尺寸差别非常大, 导致相互作用比较弱, 从而限制了太赫兹传感器的性能。通过微纳电磁结构对光场空间分布和频率分布的调控, 增强太赫兹波传感器的灵敏度是当前的研究热点。文中将重点介绍各种微纳结构太赫兹传感技术的原理和研究现状, 并通过梳理其发展趋势和当前的性能制约因素, 讨论此方向将来的发展方向和应用前景。

Recently, terahertz(THz) technology has developed rapidly, showing promising potential in the fields of communication, anti-terrorism, monitoring and biomedicine, etc. In particular, terahertz biosensor has attracted extensive attentions in biotechnology, because many biological molecules and materials have their finger prints in the THz absorption spectra, and the damage by the low power terahertz wave is low. However, the THz wave-matter interaction is relatively weak because of the mismatch between the long wavelength of THz wave and the size of biomolecules, which limits the performance of terahertz sensors. Current research interest is manipulating the spatial and spectral distributions of the electromagnetic fields based on the microstructures to enhance the sensitivity of the sensors. In this review, we are going to introduce the working mechanisms of various microstructure THz sensors and the recent progress, and then discuss their advantages and disadvantages, finally we conclude the major issues to be resolved and predict the future developing trend and potential applications.