Lateral field excited quartz crystal microbalances for biosensing applications.

The most common bulk acoustic wave device used in biosensing applications is the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM), in which a resonant pure shear acoustic wave is excited via electrodes on both major faces of a thin AT-cut quartz plate. For biosensing, the QCM is used to detect the capture of a target by a target-capture film. The sensitivity of the QCM is typically based solely on the detection of mechanical property changes, as electrical property change detection is limited by the electrode on its sensing surface. A modification of the QCM called the lateral field excited (LFE) QCM (LFE-QCM) has been developed with a bare sensing surface as both electrodes are now on a single face of the quartz plate. Compared to the QCM, the LFE-QCM exhibits significantly higher sensitivity to both electrical and mechanical property changes. This paper presents theoretical and experimental aspects of LFE-QCMs. In particular, the presence and strength of the usual and newfound LFE-QCM modes depend on the electrical properties of the film and/or sensing environment. This work also presents examples of experimental setups for measuring the response of an LFE-QCM, followed by results of LFE-QCMs used to detect liquid electrical and mechanical properties, chemical targets, and biological targets. Finally, details are given about the attachment of various target-capture films to the LFE-QCM surface to capture biomarkers associated with diseases such as cancer.

Stethoscope with digital frequency translation for improved audibility.

The performance of an acoustic stethoscope is improved by translating, without loss of fidelity, heart sounds, chest sounds, and intestinal sounds below 50 Hz into a frequency range of 200 Hz, which is easily detectable by the human ear. Such a frequency translation will be of significant benefit to hearing impaired physicians and it will improve the stethoscope performance in a noisy environment. The technique is based on a single sideband suppressed carrier modulation. Stability and bias problems commonly associated with an analog frequency translator are avoided by an all-digital implementation. Real-time audio processing is made possible by approximating a Hilbert transformer with a time delay. The performance of the digital frequency translator was verified with a 16-bit 44.1 Ks/s audio coder/decoder and a 32-bit 72 MHz microcontroller.

Electrically conductive nano graphite-filled bacterial cellulose composites.

A unique three dimensional (3D) porous structured bacterial cellulose (BC) can act as a supporting material to deposit the nanofillers in order to create advanced BC-based functional nanomaterials for various technological applications. In this study, novel nanocomposites comprised of BC with exfoliated graphite nanoplatelets (xGnP) incorporated into the BC matrix were prepared using a simple particle impregnation strategy to enhance the thermal properties and electrical conductivity of the BC. The flake-shaped xGnP particles were well dispersed and formed a continuous network throughout the BC matrix. The temperature at 10% weight loss, thermal stability and residual ash content of the nanocomposites increased at higher xGnP loadings. The electrical conductivity of the composites increased with increasing xGnP loading (attaining values 0.75 S/cm with the addition of 2 wt.% of xGnP). The enhanced conductive and thermal properties of the BC-xGnP nanocomposites will broaden applications (biosensors, tissue engineering, etc.) of BC and xGnP.

Characteristics of MgxZn1-xO thin film bulk acoustic wave devices.

Piezoelectric thin film zinc oxide (ZnO) and its ternary alloy magnesium zinc oxide (MgxZn1-xO) have broad applications in transducers, resonators, and filters. In this work, we present a new bulk acoustic wave (BAW) structure consisting of Al/MgxZn1-xO/n(+)-ZnO/r-sapphire, where Al and n+ type ZnO serve as the top and bottom electrode, respectively. The epitaxial MgxZn1-xO films have the same epitaxial relationships with the substrate as ZnO on r-Al2O3, resulting in the c-axis of the MgxZn1-xO being in the growth plane. This relationship promotes shear bulk wave propagation that affords sensing in liquid phase media without the dampening effects found in longitudinal wave mode BAW devices. The BAW velocity and electromechanical coupling coefficient of MgxZn1-xO can be tailored by varying the Mg composition, which provides an alternative and complementary method to adjust the BAW characteristics by changing the piezoelectric film thickness. This provides flexibility to design the operating frequencies of thin film bulk acoustic wave devices. Frequency responses of devices with two acoustic wave modes propagating in the specified structure are analyzed using a transmission line model. Measured results show good agreement with simulation.