Gas Sensitivity Amplification of Interdigitated Chemocapacitors Through Etching

In polymer coated planar Inter Digitated Electrodes (IDEs), the gas sensing sensitivity is much lower than the sensitivity of parallel plate capacitors. Here, we introduce a simple patterning step for the modification of the geometry of the dielectric substrate of the planar IDEs, and increase of the contribution of the sensitive layer to the output signal. The proposed methodology is investigated through simulation and verified by experimental data. Polymer coated IDEs with different dimensions of spatial wavelength were studied experimentally upon exposure to analytes of varying polarity. The sensing performance of the fabricated structures compare very well with theoretically estimated values obtained through finite element simulations. The maximum performance gain is also calculated by simulation demonstrating the potential of the technology.