July 2017
Spotlight Summary by Withawat Withayachumnankul
Low-cost metamaterial-on-paper chemical sensor
Could common materials, tools, and DIY skills be useful to create sensitive liquid sensors? Over decades, researchers have strived for sensing platforms with improved sensitivity. One common approach is to probe a change in the analyte with an electromagnetic field. Based on this concept, a number of sensor designs have been created from sophisticated laboratory processes and equipment with an aim to boost interaction between an electromagnetic field and a material under test. Indeed, the performance comes with a price tag. But is this always the case? The authors of this Optics Express paper might argue. They have created cheap liquid sensors from papers to operate at around 94 GHz. Screen printing with a conductive ink is used to create resonating dots for electromagnetic hotspots. Wax coating, just like in old-fashioned waterproof paper cups, helps to create micro-channels to guide a liquid to these hotspots. Voila! Now we have disposable sensors with their performance already proven with various liquids. We can envisage field applications in large-volume quality control. Further sensitivity improvement is plausible with more sophisticated designs, and of course with low-cost processes and DIY skills!
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Article Information
Low-cost metamaterial-on-paper chemical sensor
Aydin Sadeqi, Hojatollah Rezaei Nejad, and Sameer Sonkusale
Opt. Express 25(14) 16092-16100 (2017) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF