Surface acoustic wave (SAW) biosensors offer label-free, rapid, sensitive, and cost-effective detection of analytes in liquid samples. Applications include the detection of disease markers in blood or contaminants in food or environmental samples. Common SAW devices for sensing applications include delay line devices and resonators, the latter allowing for simple and low-cost collection of the resonance frequencies by oscillators. The velocity of the SAW, and thus the resonance frequency, is mainly influenced by mass changes on the device surface due to analyte binding, which is typically the desired parameter, but also by viscosity and conductivity changes in the liquid environment. In particular, the response to conductivity changes can interfere with the mass loading response and would therefore be desirable to eliminate. It has been shown previously that conductive layers can be used to eliminate this unwanted effect, but the setup required extensive machinery. The focus of this work is to apply metal coatings to SAW resonators using simple methods and then to test the metal-coated resonators in biosensor experiments.
Your tasks include:
The number and depth of the tasks will be adapted to the type and length of the work, i.e., bachelor or master thesis. The thesis can be written in German or English.
minimum 4 months, limited according to study regulations
For further information, please contact Dr. Kerstin Länge, phone +49 721 608-22673, e-mail: kerstin.laenge@kit.edu.