Specific Sensing Mechanism Investigation of Surface Acoustic Wave Humidity Sensors Coated With Uniform Graphene Oxide Membrane

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) humidity sensors promise broad prospects for Internet of Things (IoT) applications due to the advantages of low cost, portability, and high sensitivity. However, previous researches mainly focused on developing SAW devices with higher resonant frequencies, or using new sensing materials to improve the performance of SAW humidity sensors. Few researches studied the specific response mechanism of SAW humidity sensors, which restricted further development of the sensors. In this paper, the sensing mechanism of a graphene oxide (GO) film-based SAW humidity sensor is thoroughly studied by investigating the mechanical and electrical parameters of the uniform GO membrane at different relative humidity (from 10% RH to 90% RH). After taking these parameters into consideration for the mechanism analysis, we quantitatively indicate that the mass loading (~800 ppm) and viscoelastic effects (~60 ppm) are the primary and secondary influence factors of the sensor's humidity response respectively, while the acoustoelectric interaction has little effect on the sensitivity.