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Chemical sensor matrix

  • US 4,596,697 A
  • Filed: 09/04/1984
  • Issued: 06/24/1986
  • Est. Priority Date: 09/04/1984
  • Status: Expired due to Fees
First Claim
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1. A chemical sensor matrix for sensing the presence of chemical agents by chemo-electronic means, said chemical sensor matrix comprising a plurality of resonators embedded in a single monolithic piece of piezoelectric quartz crystal, said resonators being arranged in rectangular row and column configuration including m rows and n columns, each of said resonators being separated from its neighboring resonators by distances such that the resonant energies do not overlap, each of said resonators being coated with a different chemical substance to be sensitive to a chemical agent to be detected so that when the chemical agent reacts with the chemical substance so that the frequency fmn changes, each of said rows bearing a metallic electrode stripe for that row and each of said columns of resonators bearing a metallic electrode stripe for that column, said electrode row stripes being positioned on the top surface of the crystal, said electrode column stripes being positioned on the bottom surface of the crystal, and wherein the areas of overlap of said row and column stripes are registered with the central portions of the embedded resonators, two diode arrays positioned on the periphery of the crystal for addressing the individual row-electrode stripes and the individual column electrode stripes so that the desired resonator can be activated by connecting the stripe corresponding to its row address and the stripe corresponding to its column address to suitable active oscillator circuitry and signal processing means and the resonators (mn) then interrogated sequentially and frequency change registered.

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