Abstract
Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) is one of the many acoustic transducers. It is the most popular and widely used acoustic transducer for sensor applications. It has found wide applications in chemical and biosensing fields owing to its high sensitivity, robustness, small sized-design, and ease of integration with electronic measurement systems. However, it is necessary to coat QCM with a sensing film. Without coating materials, its selectivity and sensitivity are not obtained. At present, this is not an issue, mainly due to the advancement of oscillator circuits and dedicated measurement circuits. Since a new researcher may seek to understand QCM sensors, we provide an overview of QCM from its fundamental knowledge. Then, we explain some of the recent QCM applications both in gas-phase and liquid-phase. Next, the theory of QCM is introduced by using piezoelectric stress equations and the Mason equivalent circuit, which explains how the QCM behavior is obtained. Then, the conventional equations that govern QCM behaviors in terms of resonant frequency and resistance are described. We show the behavior of QCM with a viscous film based on the acoustic wave equation and Mason equivalent circuit. Then, we present various existing QCM electronic measurement methods. Furthermore, we describe the experiment on QCM with viscous loading and its interpretation based on the Mason equivalent circuit. Lastly, we review some theoretical models to describe QCM behavior with various models.
Highlights
For more than 40 years, the Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) has been one of the choices amongst many acoustic sensors due to its stability and sensitivity
This paper describes the overviews of QCM behavior analysis to provide the way to accelerate the accumulation of QCM knowledge
Starting with the equivalent circuit derived from the acoustic wave propagation equation with the Mason equivalent circuit, we analyze its behavior with different boundary conditions for different QCM loading effects
Summary
For more than 40 years, the Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) has been one of the choices amongst many acoustic sensors due to its stability and sensitivity. Since the oscillation circuit ceases to operate due to high loss in acoustics loading, the use of viscous films or liquid-phase application becomes limited. Sometimes the QCM behavior exhibits a positive frequency shift when the binding occurs [6]. This behavior cannot be explained by the mass loading effect and piques the interest of the researcher. The concept of loosely coupling to the QCM was used to explain positive frequency change in many sensing applications [8,9]. We doubt that the positive frequency shift was due to the oscillation circuit behavior It occurs even if true resonant frequency is captured. This paper describes the overviews of QCM behavior analysis to provide the way to accelerate the accumulation of QCM knowledge
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