LOW-COST METAMATERIAL-ON-PAPER CHEMICAL SENSOR

We present a disposable low cost paper-based sensor for sensing chemicals based on their intrinsic dielectric properties. The sensor is based on resonance shift in metamaerials from the change in capacitance of each resonator unit cell. Key novelty in the design is the implementation of metamaterial on ubiquitous paper substrate. This metamaterial-on-paper sensor is fabricated in a totally cleanroom-free process using wax and screen printing. Wax patterning enables creation of microfluidic channels to deliver samples to each resonator in an array. We demonstrate sensing of liquids: Oil, methanol, glycerol and water each having average resonance frequency shift of 1.12, 4.12, 8.76 and 11.63 gigahertz from a center frequency of 95 GHz respectively. Being label-free, this approach can be used to sense most chemicals based on their dielectric constants.