| At the start of the twenty-first century, infrared spectroscopy is one of the standard workhorses of the manufacturing world, whether in semiconductor production, process control in chemical engineering, or environmental monitoring. It is relatively inexpensive, rapid, very sensitive, and can provide quick and efficient information on chemical reaction conditions through its ability to detect characteristic vibrations of molecules of interest in the process under investigation.;In the recent years, successful identification and detection of Bio-chemicals have been attracting great interests and have many applications on biomedicine and national defense and security. In practice this goal has been limited by the detection technology. With increasing technology in infrared spectroscopy, especially Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), along with advanced development of sample preparation techniques, computer filtering and manipulation of the results, samples in vapor, liquid and solid forms all can be measured quickly and accurately now.;In this thesis, targeted for future sensor design, a Chalcogenide glass based waveguide is designed for bio-sensors in the infrared optical frequency range, and various bio-chemicals have been fingerprinted from Mid-IR to THz by utilizing the tremendous power of FTIR in the spectroscopic characterizations. The studied bio-chemicals were carefully selected based on their potential impacts, such as pharmaceutical and medical related insulin and glucose, national defense and security concerned sucrose, malathion and albumin as simulants for explosives, VX nerve agents and proteinaceous toxin, respectively. As results, the designed waveguide structure has great potential in the application on bio-sensing, and the identified vibrational peaks for these bio-chemicals created a solid foundation for future bio-sensor design and therefore would contribute huge impact on pharmaceutical/medial and national defense and security. |
