Micro-Additive Manufacturing of Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Based Gas Sensors for Diabetes Detection via Breath Analysis
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Date
2021-03-15
Authors
Sun, Manyou
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Waterloo
Abstract
Additive manufacturing (AM) is arousing more and more interest due to its flexibility to produce complex geometry, low fabrication cost and high material compatibility compared with conventional manufacturing. As a micro-scale additive manufacturing technique, aerosol jet printing (AJP) is able to fabricate fine structures with the size of several microns on substrates with flexible shapes. Compared with other thin film technologies, aerosol jet printing is suitable to fabricate thin film microelectronics with complex geometry without creating and removing a mask. One of the most important applications for aerosol jet printing is fabrication of sensors including gas sensors.
Diabetes is a chronic disease which needs continuous monitoring of blood glucose level. Breath acetone analysis is a potential non-invasive technique to monitor blood glucose level without pricking the finger with a lancet. For testing acetone vapor concentration, metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) based gas sensor is suitable for this application because of its small size and portability compared with huge equipment in the hospitals.
In this thesis, a metal oxide semiconducting gas sensor based on tin oxide thin film is fabricated which could be used for detection of acetone vapor. The material is synthesized via the sol gel process. The characterization of the material is based on the thin film coated with the sol gel solution. The whole sensor is fabricated via aerosol jet printing technique and the printed sensor is tested in a home-made chamber. Preliminary findings in the thesis prove that aerosol jet printing is another technique which may be suitable to fabricate gas sensors besides current common techniques such as chemical vapor deposition.