Title : Texturing of nanocoatings for surface acoustic wave based precise sensors
Abstract:
It is presented an approach for texturing of gas sensitive nanocoatings by using surface acoustic wave (SAW) phenomenon. This approach enhanced the performance of the precise SAW based gas sensors due to the increased specific area of the nanocoating, induced during its growth over piezoelectric substrate with propagating SAW at the moment of deposition. The technique can be used for tuneable alignment of nanoparticles or nanowires and it is scale-independent. To control the texture of the sensitive nanocoating, different topologies of the interdigital (IDT) electrodes were used in order to generate waves with different space distribution, therefore inducing electrical fields with different parameters, which in turn caused different degrees of assembling of the nanoparticles. The advantage of the proposed method are easy gas sensitive properties tailoring, large area processing, implementation of conventional patterning technologies (no needs of nanolithographic techniques for the texturing of the nanocoating), low cost, and applicability in variety of sensing structures such as optical, mechanical and biological. The study is funded from BNSF under ERA.NET RUS+ project grant KP-06-DO2/2.
Audience take-away:
- The audience will learn how to texture nanocoatings for efficient sensor applications without using expensive nanolithographic techniques.
- The audience will be able to use this knowledge for fabrication of highly sensitive structures, for example gas detecting.
- The approach reported is useful in variety of sensor types in the field of optics, mechanics, biology, as it can be applied for improving the sensing behavior of coatings with no matter of the operational principle of the sensor.
- This method will improve the accuracy of measurement of the sensor characteristics, especially for precise sensors that are expected to detect small quantities of the stimuli. The paper will provide new information that will assist the sensor designers to enhance the sensors’ performance at a low cost.
