MIT News July 27, 2022 Researchers at MIT designed, fabricated and characterized digitally manufactured, compact retarding potential analyzers (RPAs) multi-electrode instruments that can be used as in-orbit mass spectrometers and as on-ground/in-orbit ion energy analyzers. The RPA electrode housing, which is the most critical component of the RPA, was additively manufactured in a printable glass-ceramic via vat polymerization, resulting in non-porous, high-temperature compatible, and high-vacuum compatible hardware. Four different RPA designs were synthesized to probe the ionosphere (design with floating grid alignment at the aperture level) and laboratory plasmas (designs with floating grid aperture alignment at the cluster level). Simulations […]
Category Archives: Sensors
Hearing better with skin than ears
Science Daily July 1, 2022 Previously reported wearable sensors for smart human–machine interaction have limited sound-sensing quality as a consequence of a poor frequency response and a narrow acoustic-pressure range. Researchers in South Korea have developed a skin-attachable acoustic sensor that has higher sensing accuracy in wider auditory field than human ears, with flat frequency response (15–10 000 Hz) and a good range of linearity (29–134 dBSPL) as well as high conformality to flexible surfaces and human skin. They exploited the low residual stress and high processability of polymer materials in a diaphragm structure designed using acousto-mechano-electric modeling to achieve the […]
Laser writing may enable ‘electronic nose’ for multi-gas sensor
Science Daily June 30, 2022 Laser-induced thermal voxels (LITV) offer a facile platform to directly integrate nanocrystalline metal oxide and mixed metal oxide materials onto heating platforms, with access to a wide variety of compositions and morphologies including many transition metals and noble metals. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University combined laser writing and responsive sensor technologies to fabricate the first highly customizable microscale gas sensing devices. They investigated the sensing performance of a representative set of n-type and p-type LITV-deposited metal oxides and their mixtures (CuO, NiO, CuO/ZnO, and Fe2O3/Pt) in response to reducing and oxidizing gases (H2S, NO2, NH3, […]
Spray-n-Sense: Spray-painting sensors on any surface
Nanowerk June 27, 2022 An international team of researchers (Australia, Saudi Arabia) has demonstrated a sprayable on-site sensing tool, Spry-n-Sense, which consists of chromogen-doped polymer that is sprayed out in the form of nanofibers using a simple nebulization method. The nebulization method allows for nanofibers to be sprayed onto any surface. The sprayable nanofibers sensors only require compressed gas, making it possible to spray nanofibers even on non-conducting surfaces. The application performs on-site image analysis of the visually quantifiable color or fluorescence changes on the area of analyte exposure by calculating relative pixel intensity per ppm from photographs of the […]
Breakthrough paves way for photonic sensing at the ultimate quantum limit
Phys.org June 6, 2022 Quantum states of light have been shown to enhance precision in absorption estimation over classical strategies. However, most quantum sensing schemes rely on special entangled or squeezed states of light or matter that are hard to generate and detect. Researchers in the UK have shown it is possible to perform high precision measurements of important physical properties without the need for sophisticated quantum states of light and detection schemes. The key to this breakthrough is the use of ring resonators that guide light in a loop and maximize its interaction with the sample under study. Importantly, […]
Optimizing the Sensitivity of Biological Particle Detectors through Atmospheric Particle Analysis According to Climatic Characteristics in South Korea
Sensors 2022, 22(9), 3374 March 31, 2022 Researchers in South Korea optimized an environmentally adaptive detection algorithm that can better reflect changes in the complex South Korean environment than the current models. The algorithm distinguished between normal and biological particles using a laser-induced fluorescence-based biological particle detector capable of real-time measurements and size classification. It operates with minimal false alarms in any environment by training based on experimental data acquired from an area where rainfall, snow, fog and mist, Asian dust, and water waves on the beach occur. The detection performance for each level of sensitivity was examined to enable […]
Acoustic sensors to pinpoint shooters in an urban setting
Phys.org May 23, 2022 Instead of a sound propagation-based approach, researchers in Germany focused on an information theoretical analysis using the Cramér-Rao bound to predict the achievable shooter localization accuracy. They showed that accounting for incomplete and heterogeneous acoustic measurement data sets leads to maximization of the fusion gain and consequently to improved achievable localization accuracy. They validated the match between predicted and actual experimental performance in free-field measurements with supersonic gunshots including varying sensor-to-shooter geometries, weapon types, and various measurement types. By measuring signatures of impulsive gas cannon shots in urban terrain, they analyzed the effect of buildings to […]
Scientists turn a hydrogen molecule into a quantum sensor
Science Daily April 22, 2022 Researchers at UC Irvine positioned two bound atoms of hydrogen in between the silver tip of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and a sample composed of a flat copper surface arrayed with small islands of copper nitride. With pulses of the laser lasting trillionths of a second, they were able to excite the hydrogen molecule and detect changes in its quantum states at cryogenic temperatures and in the ultrahigh vacuum environment of the instrument, rendering atomic-scale, time-lapsed images of the sample. The STM was equipped to detect minute electrical current flowing in this space and […]
Nanomaterials: Light dependent atom clusters for sensing applications
Phys.org April 1, 2022 An international team of researchers (Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland) has developed a new environment-sensing device based on the opto-ionic-electronic phenomena of an octahedral molybdenum metal (Mo6) cluster. When the Mo6 cluster is electrochemically deposited on a transparent electrode in an organic solvent containing a trace amount of water, the water permeates the deposited film. During the process, some ligand species that stabilize the frame structure of the Mo6 cluster are substituted with hydroxyl groups, and the negatively charged frame structure of the Mo6 cluster unit is stabilized by hydronium counterions. As a result, the transparent film […]
Nano particle trapped between mirrors works as a quantum sensor
Science Daily April 7, 2022 In an optical resonator light is reflected between mirrors, and it interacts with the levitated nanoparticle. Such interaction can give rise to dynamical instabilities which are often considered undesirable. An international team of researchers (Austria, Switzerland) has shown how they can be used as a resource. They have shown that by properly controlling these instabilities, the resulting unstable dynamics of a mechanical oscillator inside an optical cavity leads to mechanical squeezing. They applied this approach to a silica nanoparticle coupled to a microcavity via coherent scattering. The new protocol is robust in the presence of […]