A Novel PET-Based Piezoresistive MEMS Sensor Platform for Agricultural Applications

A simple and cost effective process is demonstrated for fabricating polyethylene terephthalate (PET) cantilever-based sensor platform with piezoresistive transduction. A one step method is developed to coat graphene nanoplatelet piezoresistive layer on to the PET structural layer. The proposed platform can be used for a variety of sensing applications. The novelty of this process is that it does not require any expensive lithography tools or a specialized clean room facility. We report here the fabrication, characterization, and application of this sensor for the detection of soil macronutrients. Ours is the first report demonstrating the use of PET-based microelectromechanical system for agricultural sensing application.