New Application of Shear Horizontal Surface Acoustic Wave Sensors to Identifying Fruit Juices

The objective of this paper is to present a new application of shear horizontal surface acoustic wave (SH-SAW) devices on 36° rotated Y-cut X-propagating LiTaO3 for a sensing system that can identify liquid samples, such as fruit juices. Theoretical sensor sensitivity for acoustoelectric interaction with a liquid loaded on the SAW propagation surface was derived and confirmed with experimental results. The results strongly suggested that by employing SH-SAW devices with different center frequencies the sensor can recognize many liquid samples without a film coated on the substrate surface. In the experiment, the sensing system which identifies fruit juices was fabricated using three SH-SAW devices with center frequencies of 30, 50, and 100 MHz. Identification of samples, eleven kinds of fruit juices, was achieved by classification in principal component analysis and discriminant analysis. Since the SH-SAW sensor without a coating film has intrinsically good reproducibility and stability, it is effective for identification and quality control of liquid samples.