WHAT

IS NANOSENSORS?

NANOSENSORS
Biological, chemical or surgical sensory units that convey information about nanoparticles to the macroscopic world. Uses:Nanomedicines, computer chips and nanorobots. Production methods: Top-down lithography, bottom-up assembly and molecular selfassembly.

 By measuring changes in volume, displacement & velocity, gravitational, electric & magnetic forces, pressure or temperature of cells in a body, nanosensors may be used to differentiate and recognize cancerous and non-cancerous cells. Eg: CdSe quantum dots

Introduction
There are various transduction methods used for real-time, instant monitoring of humidity: a) Thermo element b) Field-Ionization from water-adsorbed CNTs

c) Humidity-sensing with a moisture-sensitive polymer film

Introduction
There are various transduction methods used for real-time, instant monitoring of humidity: a) Thermo element b) Field-Ionization from water-adsorbed CNTs

c) Humidity-sensing with a moisture-sensitive polymer film

Introduction
Humidity-sensing with a moisturesensitive polymer film

Well-developed capacitive (or) resistive sensing methods can be used to detect a dielectric constant (or) resistivity variation caused by the absorption & desorption of moisture in a polymer patch.

Introduction
Polyimide has been extensively investigated as a moisture-sensing material because of low hysteresis, good linearity and high sensitivity to humidity. Dokmeci and Najafi used a capacitive sensing with polyimide as the moisture-sensitive material, integrated with hermetic packaging.

Micro-Capacitive Sensor Structure

Interdigitated gold particles with polyimide coating on top Leakage current path between electrodes prevented by SiO2 passivation layer b/w Au & polyimide Device size: 6mm x 3mm Sensing polyimide area: 2.3mm x 1mm x 2m

Micro-Capacitive Sensor Structure

Consists of 9 parallel fingers: 1.9 mm long, 20 m wide, 0.2 m thick & 50 m apart. The heater pattern that runs along the centre of the gap, is 12.8 mm long, 20 m wide & 0.2 m thick. The total resistance of the heater line is 78.

Modification of polyimide surface

Modification of chemically-unmodified polyimide by etching in O2 plasma with the power of 100 W & O2 flow rate of 100 sccm at a vacuum level of 0.1 Torr for 3 minutes. Initial thickness of the flat polyimide film was 1.2 m, but after etching with O2 plasma, a nano-scale polyimide grass was formed whose individual blade was 387 nm long and 40 nm diameter(average values)

Modification of polyimide surface

Modification of polyimide surface

SURFACE-TO-VOLUME RATIO: Nanograss = 215 * flat-film simple cubic

Nanograss = 338 * flat-film

HCP

On an average, nanograss = 280 * flat-film

Modification of polyimide surface

Improved S-V ratio promotes faster adsorption of water*, thereby improving sensor charateristics. * Polyimide surface has greater affinity to moisture when it is treated with O2 plasma

Chemical characterization of modified polyimide

XPS was used to study the chemical changes of the polyimide surface resulting from O2 plasma treatment. It was found that there was an in C & O after plasma treatment, which promoted formation of carbonyl groups. Since the carbonyl groups were polar, H-atoms in H2O readily attracted with O-atoms in the carbonyl groups through a dipole-dipole interaction.

Device fabrication