Adeagbo Habeeb Foluso, Yang Binbin
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, NC 27411, USA.
Sensors (Basel). 2025 Sep 6;25(17):5576. doi: 10.3390/s25175576.
Despite its wide acceptance, one of the most critical limitations of Terahertz wave technology is its high sensitivity to moisture. This limitation can, in turn, be exploited for use in moisture detection applications. This work presents a quantitative, non-invasive characterization of moisture content in standard gypsum drywall using Terahertz Time-Domain Spectroscopy (THz-TDS). With an increase in the moisture content of the drywall sample, experimental results indicated an increase in the dielectric properties such as the refractive index, permittivity, absorption coefficient, extinction coefficient, and dissipation factor. The demonstrated sensitivity to moisture establishes THz-TDS as a powerful tool for structural monitoring, hidden defect detection, and electromagnetic modeling of real-world building environments. Beyond material diagnostics, these findings have broader implications for THz indoor propagation studies, especially for emerging sub-THz and low THz communication technologies in 5G/6G and THz imaging of objects hidden behind the wall.
尽管太赫兹波技术已被广泛接受，但其最关键的局限性之一是对水分高度敏感。反过来，这一局限性可被用于水分检测应用。本文利用太赫兹时域光谱技术（THz-TDS）对标准石膏板中的水分含量进行了定量、非侵入性表征。随着干墙样品水分含量的增加，实验结果表明其介电特性如折射率、介电常数、吸收系数、消光系数和损耗因子都有所增加。所展示出的对水分的敏感性使太赫兹时域光谱技术成为用于结构监测、隐藏缺陷检测以及真实建筑环境电磁建模的强大工具。除了材料诊断之外，这些发现对太赫兹室内传播研究具有更广泛的意义，特别是对于5G/6G中新兴的亚太赫兹和低太赫兹通信技术以及墙后隐藏物体的太赫兹成像而言。
