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Published on: May 8, 2013
Spider Silk-Improved Quartz-Enhanced Conductance Spectroscopy for Medical Mask Humidity Sensing
Leqing Lin1, Yu Zhong1, Haoyang Lin1
1Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Information and Sensing Technologies of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, Department of Optoelectronic Engineering, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China.
Abstract:
Spider silk is one of the hottest biomaterials researched currently, due to its excellent mechanical properties. This work reports a novel humidity sensing platform based on a spider silk-modified quartz tuning fork (SSM-QTF). Since spider silk is a kind of natural moisture-sensitive material, it does not demand additional sensitization. Quartz-enhanced conductance spectroscopy (QECS) was combined with the SSM-QTF to access humidity sensing sensitively. The results indicate that the resonance frequency of the SSM-QTF decreased monotonously with the ambient humidity. The detection sensitivity of the proposed SSM-QTF sensor was 12.7 ppm at 1 min. The SSM-QTF sensor showed good linearity of ~0.99. Using this sensor, we successfully measured the humidity of disposable medical masks for different periods of wearing time. The results showed that even a 20 min wearing time can lead to a >70% humidity in the mask enclosed space. It is suggested that a disposable medical mask should be changed <2 h.
