Abstract
Pressure sensors are very significant and are used in various areas such as automobiles, aerospace, medical industry, energy storage, corrosion protection, electrochromic devices, and electrochemical sensors. Most of the pressure sensors in the market are intended to operate either in the air, dry gases and water-based environments. Due to interferences from the environment the efficiency is hampered and life cycle of the pressure sensors is minimized. As a result, measurement errors and readings were reported due to interferences such as trapped air within a cylinder, high humidity, thus reducing sensitivity and delaying the response time. In this study we determine the pressure dependence of electrical resistance and capacitance sensitivity of a hydrostatic pressure sensor based on Metal Carbide (MC), Carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) and synthetic polymer nanocomposites deposited onto gold (Au) interdigitated electrode. We intended to utilize a cost-effective, simple, fast deposition process and fabrication of thermoplastic polymer nanocomposites for pressure sensing device and to study electrical properties of pressure sensing using Inductance (L), Capacitance (C) and Resistance (R) LCR meter. The study was carried out, whereby three fabricated pressure sensors gave appreciably good sensitivity. We report on the preparation of hydrostatic pressure sensors, based on MC, CNPs and Polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP). For these devices, we used CNPs with an average diameter of 30 to 40 nm. The sensor was compared with MC/CNPs/Polyyrrole (Ppy) based sensor to study polymer effect on the sensors. The sensitivities were obtained 0.158 KΩ Kpa-1, 0.077 μF Kpa-1 and 0.04 KΩ Kpa-1 (vacuum pressure) for MC/Ppy, MC/CNPs/Ppy and MC/CNPs/PVP, respectively. Thus, the MC/Ppy sensor would be suitable for resistive touchscreen technology, whereas MC/CNPs/Ppy sensor would be an ideal sensor for capacitive touchscreen applications. Hence, polymer nanocomposites have great potential application in hydrostatic pressure sensors, due to phenomenal properties than their constituent materials.
M.Sc. (NanoScience)