Embedded, Fully Spray-Coated Pressure Sensor Using a Capacitive Transducing Mechanism.

Embedding functional sensor layers directly into mechanical systems in heavy-duty surroundings facilitate the real-time monitoring of the system's state. This work presents a fully-spray coated pressure sensor that is suitable for applications in the high pressure range. It is embedded into functionalized organic coatings that additionally act as a dielectric for the capacitive sensing mechanism.

Screen-Printed, Pure Carbon-Black Thermocouple Fabrication and Seebeck Coefficients.

Thermocouples classically consist of two metals or semiconductor components that are joined at one end, where temperature is measured. Carbon black is a low-cost semiconductor with a Seebeck coefficient that depends on the structure of the carbon particles. Different carbon black screen-printing inks generally exhibit different Seebeck coefficients, and two can therefore be combined to realize a thermocouple.

Utilizing a high fundamental frequency quartz crystal resonator as a biosensor in a digital microfluidic platform.

We demonstrate the operation of a digital microfluidic lab-on-a-chip system utilizing Electro Wetting on Dielectrics (EWOD) as the actuation principle and a High Fundamental Frequency (HFF; 50 MHz) quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) resonator as a mass-sensitive sensor. In a first experiment we have tested the reversible formation of a phosphor-lipid monolayer of phospholipid vesicles out of an aqueous buffer suspension onto a bio-functionalized integrated QCM sensor. A binding of bio-molecules results in an altered mass load of the resonant sensor and a shift of the resonance frequency can be measured.

Hybrid nanoimprinted laser based on conjugated conductive polymer and nanocrystal quantum dots.

A composite of the conjugate conductive polymer poly(2-methoxy-5-(2-ethylhexyloxy)-1,4-phenylenevinylene) (MEH-PPV) and CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) is utilized for nanoimprinted lasers after drop-casting onto one-dimensional omnidirectional Bragg mirrors. Strong amplified spontaneous emission is observed at the resonances of both the QDs and the polymer. Clearly resolved, low-threshold lasing was found after nanoimprinting of distributed-feedback gratings on the composite surface.