Characterisation of Titanium-Oxide Thin Films for Efficient pH Sensing in Low-Power Electrochemical Systems

A compact electrochemical sensor module for pH detection was developed for potential integration into specialized devices used for live cell or tissue incubation, for applications in highly parallelized cell culture analysis, by incorporating Organ-on-Chip devices. This research focuses on the deposition, structural and chemical analysis, and functional characterization of different titanium-oxide layers with various compositions as potentially sensitive materials for pH sensing applications. The titanium-oxide layers were deposited using vacuum sputtering and atomic layer deposition at 100 °C and 300 °C, respectively. Transmission electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were utilized to determine the specific composition and structure of different titanium-oxide layers. These TiOx-functionalized electrodes were connected to the application-specific analog front-end chip of the low-power readout circuit for precise evaluation. The pH sensitivity of the differently modified electrodes, employing various TiOx materials, was evaluated using pH calibration solutions ranging from pH 6 to 8. Among the various deposition solutions, such as sputtering or high-temperature atomic layer deposition, the TiOx layer deposited using low-temperature atomic layer deposition proved more suitable for pH sensing applications, with a sensitivity of 54.8–56.7 mV/pH, which closely approximates the Nernstian response.