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Weakly Coupled Piezoelectric MEMS Resonators for Aerosol Sensing.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Chellasivalingam, Malar 
Imran, Hassan 
Pandit, Milind 
Boies, Adam M 
Seshia, Ashwin A 

Abstract

This paper successfully demonstrates the potential of weakly coupled piezoelectric MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) gravimetric sensors for the detection of ultra-fine particulates. As a proof-of-principle, the detection of diesel soot particles of 100 nanometres or less is demonstrated. A practical monitoring context also exists for diesel soot particles originating from combustion engines, as they are of serious health concern. The MEMS sensors employed in this work operate on the principle of vibration mode-localisation employing an amplitude ratio shift output metric for readout. Notably, gains are observed while comparing parametric sensitivities and the input referred stability for amplitude ratio and resonant frequency variations, demonstrating that the amplitude ratio output metric is particularly suitable for long-term measurements. The soot particle mass directly estimated using coupled MEMS resonators can be correlated to the mass, indirectly estimated using the condensation particle counter used as the reference instrument.

Description

Keywords

Q factor, amplitude ratio sensitivity, amplitude ratio stability, coupled MEMS resonators, frequency stability, particulate matter, piezoelectric MEMS, soot particles

Journal Title

Sensors (Basel)

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1424-8220
1424-8220

Volume Title

20

Publisher

MDPI AG
Sponsorship
British Council (IND/CONT/G/16-17/77)