Quick and Sensitive Detection of Water Using Galvanic-Coupled Arrays with a Submicron Gap for the Advanced Prediction of Dew Condensation

Frost formation through super-cooled water within micron gap of galvanic coupled arrays

Frost is considered one of the key factors that negatively affects numerous daily life aspects all over the globe such as growth of crops, safety of aviation and transportation vehicles, working efficiency of air circulating systems and many others. Therefore, monitoring and early detection of frost are crucially needed to avoid such drastic effects. In this study, we used the micron gap of our newly developed galvanic coupled arrays named as moisture sensor chip (MSC) for the early detection of frost formation from super-cooled water droplets. The early frost formation was monitored via the tiny ice crystals formed on the cooled MSC surface at four different humidity levels using simultaneous electrochemical and optical microscopic detection tools. Experimental results revealed for the first time a remarkable increase in the detected galvanic current due to the condensation frosting mechanism of super-cooled water droplets via liquid transition transformation even at very low relative humidity which was believed to be responsible for de-sublimation frosting. Moreover, the super-cooled droplets formed ice bridges along their boundary domains due to the accumulation of the acquired water vapour that was evidenced by the release of the heat of solidification. These findings demonstrated that the MSC could be used as a promising platform for the early detection of frost formation considering the appropriate protective measures against its adverse effects.

Recent Sensing Technologies of Imperceptible Water in Atmosphere

Accurate detection and quantitative evaluation of environmental water in vapor and liquids state expressed as humidity and precipitation play key roles in industrial and scientific applications. However, the development of supporting tools and techniques remains a challenge. Although optical methods such as IR and LASER could detect environmental water in the air, their apparatus is relatively huge. Alternatively, solid detection field systems (SDFSs) could recently lead to a revolution in device downsizing and sensing abilities via advanced research, mainly for materials technology. Herein, we present an overview of several SDFS based sensing categories and their core materials mainly used to detect water in atmosphere, either in the vapor or liquid phase. We considered the governing mechanism in the detection process, such as adsorption/desorption, condensation/evaporation for the vapor phase, and surface attach/detach for the liquid phase. Sensing categories such as optical, chilled mirror, resistive, capacitive, gravimetric sensors were reviewed together with their designated tools such as acoustic wave, quartz crystal microbalance, IDT, and many others, giving typical examples of daily based real scientific applications.

Quantitative and qualitative studies for real monitoring of interfacial molecular water

HYPOTHESIS

Interfacial water plays an essential role in natural phenomena and scientific applications despite causing many economic losses. Therefore, its real monitoring is no question mandatory; however, suitable techniques are quite rare and/or with limitations.

EXPERIMENTS

Moisture Sensor (MS) was used to detect the galvanic response current arising from the stacked interfacial water molecules between two dissimilar electrodes under controlled relative humidity (RH). Simultaneously, the frequency response was detected using QCM sensor as a quantitative tool. Bare and Hydrophilic (HP) sensor surfaces were used to examine the surface wettability. Moreover, sum frequency generation (SFG) was used to investigate the qualitative formation and the nature of stacked interfacial water molecules on bare and HP modified surfaces of quartz prism.

FINDINGS

Results revealed that, response current and frequency change were increased as the number of stacked water molecules increased. Correlating response current and frequency gave a clear quantitative estimation of stacked water molecules on the sensors' surfaces. Interfacial water molecules possessed strong H-bonding nature at the bare prism surface whereas, strong and weak H-bonding were existing at the HP/prism surface. Such findings provide feasible evaluation for the galvanic current source due to stacked interfacial water molecules at different levels of RH.

Quantitative Correlation of Droplets on Galvanic-Coupled Arrays with Response Current by Image Processing

Evaluating the presence of a slight amount of water plays a crucial role in practical applications such as the advanced detection of dew condensation and the microdetermination of perspiration and transpiration. For this purpose, we have developed a configuration for the moisture sensor that consists of a microgalvanic cell composed of narrow metal arrays. It is inferred that the output response current arising from this sensor should depend on the geometric parameters (e.g., number, area, volume, etc.) of water droplets attaching on the sensor surface. In this study, the output current was recorded, while the microscopic images of the sensor surface were captured. The droplets on the sensor surface were analyzed manually and by computational image processing with deep learning and ImageJ. The deep learning technique shortened the processing time to 1/1000 of the manual one and was able to match 90-100% of the manual count. The results revealed that the response current increased with the total projected area of droplets bridging the galvanic-coupled arrays on the sensor surface. In addition, a straight line with relatively strong positive correlation was obtained between the response current and the total volume of the bridging droplets. These findings suggested that our sensor can be practically used to estimate the presence of a slight amount of water.

A Highly Sensitive FET-Type Humidity Sensor with Inkjet-Printed Pt-In2O3 Nanoparticles at Room Temperature

In this work, Pt-doped In₂O₃ nanoparticles (Pt-In₂O₃) were inkjet printed on a FET-type sensor platform that has a floating gate horizontally aligned with a control gate for humidity detection at room temperature. The relative humidity (RH)-sensing behavior of the FET-type sensor was investigated in a range from 3.3 (dry air in the work) to about 18%. A pulsed measurement method was applied to the transient RH-sensing tests of the FET-type sensor to suppress sensor baseline drift. An inkjet-printed Pt-In₂O₃ resistive-type sensor was also fabricated on the same wafer for comparison, and it showed no response to low RH levels (below 18%). In contrast, the FET-type sensor presented excellent low humidity sensitivity and fast response (32% of response and 58 s of response time for 18% RH) as it is able to detect the work-function changes of the sensing material induced by the physisorption of water molecules. The sensing mechanism of the FET-type sensor and the principle behind the difference in sensing performance between two types of sensors were explained through the analysis on the adsorption processes of water molecules and energy band diagrams. This research is very useful for the in-depth study of the humidity-sensing behaviors of Pt-In₂O₃, and the proposed FET-type humidity sensor could be a potential candidate in the field of real-time gas detection.