Enhanced Sensory Properties of a Multichannel Quartz Crystal Microbalance Coated with Polymeric Nanobeads.docVIP

Sensors 2007, 7, 2920-2928 sensors ISSN 1424-8220 ? 2007 by MDPI /sensors Full Research Paper Enhanced Sensory Properties of a Multichannel Quartz Crystal Microbalance Coated with Polymeric Nanobeads Simone Pantalei 1,*, Emiliano Zampetti 1, Antonella Macagnano 1, Andrea Bearzotti 1, Iole Venditti 2 and Maria V. Russo 2 1 CNR-IMM, Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems, via del Fosso del Cavaliere 100, 00133 Rome, Italy 2 Department of Chemistry, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, p.le A. Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: simone.pantalei@r.it Received: 1 October 2007 / Accepted: 20 November 2007 / Published: 23 November 2007 Abstract: In this study the sensorial performances of a four-channel quartz crystal microbalance implemented on a single quartz plate are reported and compared with those of four independent quartz crystal microbalances. Particular attention has been devoted to both cross talk in responses and sensor sensitivity. A recently synthesized nanostructured polymer, poly[phenylacetylene-(co-2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate)], has been used as chemical interactive material. The interactions of our sensor system with relative humidity are also reported. The multichannel device shows a better homogeneity of the mass sensitivity with a spread of the values less then 4% compared to a 50% spread observed in the set of four microbalances. Keywords: multichannel quartz crystal microbalance, chemical sensors, nanostructured polymers. 1. Introduction The quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) is one of the widely used chemical sensors in gas sensing for medical, environmental and food applications [1-3]. A fundamental role in chemical sensors is played by the transducer used for transforming the physical-chemical events into electrical signals. Important characteristics like sensitivity and resolution happen to