The Effect of Electrode Thickness on Mass Sensitivity of QCM Cannot Be Ignored

Quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) has been widely used in various fields. The mass sensitivity of QCM that means the ratio between the resonant frequency shift and the mass change on the surface of the crystal wafer is a significant parameter. The accuracy of the mass sensitivity value can greatly affect the data analysis, which in turn affects the repeatability of the QCM-related experiment. Meanwhile, we noticed that most companies that provide QCMs do not give out specific electrode thickness values but a wide range of 400-10 000Å. In this letter, we quantitatively studied the effect of electrode thickness on mass sensitivity of QCM through theoretical calculation and experiment. The result shows the mass sensitivity of QCM with 10 000-Å thickness is 1.46 times and 2.08 times that of 1000- and 400-Å thickness, respectively. Obviously, the uncertainty in electrode thickness values provided by companies inevitably brings large experimental errors, which lead to inaccuracy and poor repeatability of QCM experiment. Therefore, we suggest that the companies providing QCMs should give the specific value of the electrode thickness, and then the researchers should also consider the influence of the electrode thickness when analyzing the data to improve the accuracy and repeatability.