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Investigation of the effect of metallization ratio and side shift on the interdigitated electrodes performance for biochemical sensing

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Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of metallization ratio and side shift on the performance of interdigitated electrodes (IDEs). The IDEs were modelled using normal mesh and adaptive mesh refinement techniques to investigate the modelling error. The performance parameters such as electric field distribution, crosstalk and penetration depth of IDEs and the phenomenon of impedance biosensor based on surface conductivity model was simulated using COMSOL Multiphysics software. A detailed analysis was carried out to see the effect of metallization ratio on these performance parameters. In the simulation, the metallization ratio of IDEs was varied between 0.2–0.9, and the variation in side shift was 1–50 µm. A significant reduction in modelling error was obtained for adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) based IDEs model. The IDEs with metallization ratio 0.7 and side shift between 10–20 µm have shown higher measurement sensitivity. For validation of simulation results, experiments were conducted on fabricated IDEs with different metallization ratios. IDEs with metallization ratios 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7 were fabricated using PCB technology. The impedance spectra were obtained for a 10–100 mM KCl solution using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Through simulation and from experimental results, higher measurement sensitivity from IDEs was obtained at 0.7 metallization ratio. Finally, this paper demonstrates the importance of metallization ratio and side shift to ensure higher measurement sensitivity from IDEs when used for biochemical sensing applications.

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Acknowledgements

SD would like to thank BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus for providing institute fellowship during research work. GB would like to acknowledge BITS Pilani for providing financial support under project additional competitive grant (GOA/ACG/18-19/Oct/13).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus, Goa, India

    Shreyas Deshpande & Gautam Bacher

  2. Biosensor Lab, Department of Chemistry, BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus, Goa, India

    Sunil Bhand

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  1. Shreyas Deshpande
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  2. Sunil Bhand
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Correspondence to Gautam Bacher.

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Deshpande, S., Bhand, S. & Bacher, G. Investigation of the effect of metallization ratio and side shift on the interdigitated electrodes performance for biochemical sensing. J Appl Electrochem 51, 893–904 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10800-021-01549-x

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