Surface acoustic wave microsensors and applications

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices have been studied for the last twenty years as highly sensitive yet relatively inexpensive microsensors for applications ranging from temperature and stress to gas and biological sensing. This wide range of applications is due to the SAW microsensors' high sensitivity to several physical parameters including mass, temperature, stress, and conductivity. Their low cost results from the use of standard batch microelectronic fabrication techniques for their manufacture. In this paper several chemical sensing applications for SAW devices 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.