RESUMO
Love-wave gas sensors based on surface functionalized iron oxide nanoparticles has been developed in this research. Amino-terminated iron oxide nanoparticles were deposited, by a spin coating technique, onto the surface of Love-wave sensors, as a very reproducible gas-sensing layer. The gases tested were organic solvents, such as butanol, isopropanol, toluene and xylene, for a wide and low concentration range, obtaining great responses, fast response times of a few minutes (the time at which the device produced a signal change equal to 90%), good reproducibilities, and different responses for each detected solvent. The estimated limits of detection obtained have been very low for each detected compound, about 1 ppm for butanol, 12 ppm for isopropanol, 3 ppm for toluene and 0.5 ppm for xylene. Therefore, it is demonstrated that this type of acoustic wave sensor, with surface amino-functionalized nanoparticles, is a good alternative to those ones functionalized with metal nanoparticles, which result very expensive sensors to achieve worse results.
RESUMO
A positioning system with approximately nanometer resolution has been developed based on a new implementation of a motor-driven screw scheme. In contrast to conventional positioning systems based on piezoelectric elements, this system shows remarkably low levels of drift and vibration, and eliminates the need for position feedback during typical data acquisition processes. During positioning or scanning processes, non-repeatability and hysteresis problems inherent in mechanical positioning systems are greatly reduced using a software feedback scheme. As a result, we are able to demonstrate an average mechanical resolution of 1.45 nm and near diffraction-limited imaging using scanning optical microscopy. We propose this approach to nanopositioning as a readily accessible alternative enabling high spatial resolution scanning probe characterization (e.g., polarimetry) and provide practical details for its implementation.