Biodiesel Physical Properties Detection Using One-Dimensional Phononic Crystal Sensor

Abstract

Nowadays, biodiesel is considered as an important alternative source of energy. In this work, we introduce theoretically a phononic crystal (PnC) model acts as a biodiesel sensor. Such a sensor can detect and measure biodiesel physical properties efficiently. The sensor configuration is a 1D PnC structure and a defect layer filled with biodiesel in-between. Using the transfer matrix method, the transmission spectrum of the biodiesel PnC structure is calculated. We pay more attention to the resonant peak (the transmitted peak inside the band gap), which is related directly to the biodiesel properties. The obtained simulated results have revealed that the resonant peak is very sensitive to the physical properties of biodiesel. Also, the resonant peak position is highly affected by the biodiesel layer thickness, temperature, and pressure applied to the PnC structure. Moreover, we obtained a high \(Q\) value for the biodiesel sensor at room temperature up to the value of 1980.