Piezo-electric sensors as electronic/electrical devices

This tutorial will cover devices based on piezoelectric crystals and used for physical and chemical sensor applications. Various acoustic wave devices used as temperature, mass, pressure, torque, acceleration sensors, for material characterization, and as chemical agents detectors will be presented and described. The course will focus on two types of piezoelectric sensors that have reached some level of maturity - available as commercial products or under development. They are the thickness shear mode (TSM) resonators and surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices (both Rayleigh SAW and shear horizontal-SAW). Chemically sensitive and selective absorptive coatings used for chemical sensors will also be described. Sensor device principles and modeling including second order effects, design parameters, operating characteristics, and key sensing parameters will be covered. Various measurement schemes used with the piezoelectric sensors will be described.