Liquid phase direct laser printing of polymers for chemical sensing applications

This letter demonstrates the direct laser printing of polymers on capacitive micromechanical arrays for the realization of a chemical sensor. Each sensor of a single chip array is composed of a thin Si membrane covered by a chemically sensitive polymer layer by means of a direct laser printing technique. We present the high spatial resolution deposition of three different sensitive polymer materials by the liquid phase laser induced forward transfer process. We also show that the optimum sensitivity of the sensors can be achieved by varying the percentage of the coverage of the sensors' membranes with the polymer.