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A Miniaturized On-Chip Colorimeter for Detecting NPK Elements.

Authors :
Liu RT
Tao LQ
Liu B
Tian XG
Mohammad MA
Yang Y
Ren TL
Source :
Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) [Sensors (Basel)] 2016 Aug 04; Vol. 16 (8). Date of Electronic Publication: 2016 Aug 04.
Publication Year :
2016

Abstract

Recently, precision agriculture has become a globally attractive topic. As one of the most important factors, the soil nutrients play an important role in estimating the development of precision agriculture. Detecting the content of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK) elements more efficiently is one of the key issues. In this paper, a novel chip-level colorimeter was fabricated to detect the NPK elements for the first time. A light source-microchannel photodetector in a sandwich structure was designed to realize on-chip detection. Compared with a commercial colorimeter, all key parts are based on MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) technology so that the volume of this on-chip colorimeter can be minimized. Besides, less error and high precision are achieved. The cost of this colorimeter is two orders of magnitude less than that of a commercial one. All these advantages enable a low-cost and high-precision sensing operation in a monitoring network. The colorimeter developed herein has bright prospects for environmental and biological applications.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
1424-8220
Volume :
16
Issue :
8
Database :
MEDLINE
Journal :
Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
27527177
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3390/s16081234