Short Oral Presentations

Sensing environmental parameters such as temperature,volatile organic molecules, relative humidity, ionicstrength or pH can be achieved in many different wayswith devices exploiting the sensing capability of materialsresulting from their solid state properties (e.g. ofsemiconductors, fluorescent probes, etc.) or from wetchemistry. However, there is a growing demand forcheap, miniaturized, adaptable sensors, in particular forpackaging, garment and biomedical applications.Selectivity and multifunctionality are additional issuesthat cannot generally be met by the current state-of-theart sensors, unless using relatively sophisticated techniquesor equipment.In particular, sensing pH with solid state devices is asought after alternative to conventional pH sensing bymembrane electrodes requiring calibration and relativelylarge volumes of solution to be analysed. An attractiveoption with a broad range of potential applicationsinvolves using a resistive device in which the pH sensingmechanism relies on the modification of the dielectricproperties of the coating of an electrode, allowing fastpH measurements even from microliter-sized samples.As a general strategy for the fabrication of single-use,disposable sensing devices, possibly capable of simultaneous sensing of multiple environmental physical and chemical parameters we are investigating a sensor architecture based on a resistive electrode coated with asmart polymer nanocomposite as the sensing material