Deposition of polymeric sensing materials for gas detection

Abstract

Once a promising polymeric (detection) material is identified, it needs to be incorporated into a MEMS sensor. In this sensor functionalization step, the deposition of the polymeric material on the sense-plate should be accurate and repeatable. After a quick overview of different deposition methods and related solubility characteristics of polyaniline (and derivatives), drop coating is implemented to deposit polyaniline on sense-plates, moving from a manual deposition technique to a semi-automated deposition procedure with more practical benefits, and identifying an optimal ‘carrier’ mixture of 10–15/90–85 polyaniline/ethylene glycol. A correlation can be established between area coverage and polymer mass, which leaves room for future fully automated deposition using image processing.