Design and Analysis of Quartz Crystal Microbalance with a New Ring-Shaped Interdigital Electrode

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 22; no. 19; p. 7422
• Main Authors: Wang, Pengyi, Ling, Mingxiang, Li, Minghai
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 29-09-2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Design criteria; Electrodes; Finite element analysis; high quality factor; interdigital electrode; Plating; quartz crystal microbalance; Quartz crystals; Sensitivity; Shear strain; uniform mass sensitivity
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s22197422

In this paper, a new type of ring-shaped interdigital electrode is proposed to improve the accuracy and repeatability of quartz crystal microbalance. The influence of different types of single finger, dot finger, dot double-finger electrodes on mass sensitivity distribution as well as the optimal proportion of finger and gap width are obtained through multi-physical coupling simulation. The results show that the design criteria of interdigital electrodes will not change with the increase in the number of fingers. The gap width should obey the decrease order from central to edge and be about twice the width of finger. The width of the outermost finger and the radius of the middle dot electrode should be maintained at about 0.4 and 0.2 times of the total electrode radius. An experiment was carried out to verify that the quartz wafer with a dot double-finger electrode has high quality factors and less modal coupling, which can satisfy the engineering application well. As a conclusion, this study provides a design idea for the electrode to maintain a uniform distribution of quartz crystal microbalance mass sensitivity.