Research Interests:

The primary goal of our research group is to develop the fundamental science and application technology for the sensor system components that are common to the platforms which can meet significant sensing needs such as for medical diagnostics, national defense and energy security. Current focus is on acoustic wave devices for these applications. The sensing principle in these devices is the perturbation of elastic waves in solids by environmental variables, and its recognition by suitable electronics. A variety of these acoustic waves at radio frequencies are excited in various piezoelectric materials in our laboratory using suitably designed micro-fabricated electrodes. These transducers are functionalized with sensing layers that interact with analytes to form selective, sensitive, fast-responding and robust sensors. Our recent successes include palladium and palladium-alloy functionalized single walled carbon nanotube (Pd-SWNT) interfaces to a Rayleigh surface acoustic wave transducer for superior hydrogen sensing, a polymer functionalized, high frequency thickness shear mode (TSM) transducer for organic vapor detection and process monitoring, and a hexagonal transducer that propagates guided shear horizontal surface acoustic waves in one direction while propagating waves with substantial shear vertical components in others to achieve differential sensing of multiple biomarkers, for applications to ovarian cancer and trauma biomarker sensing.