<title>Surface acoustic wave microsensors and applications</title>

Abstract

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices have been studied for the last twenty years as highly sensitive yet relatively inexpensive microsensors for applications ranging from gas and biological sensing to thin film and surface characterization. This wide range of applications is due to SAW microsensors high sensitivity to several physical parameters including mass, conductivity, permittivity, stress, temperature and electric fields. Their low cost results from the use of standard batch microelectronic fabrication techniques for their manufacture. In this work several SAW sensing applications are described. These include: gas detection; thin film polymer characterization; dew-point measurements; surface energy measurements; and as a method to measure surface cleanliness. Experimental results are presented along with comparisons to other measurement techniques.