TY - JOUR A1 - Wang, Bei A1 - Baeuscher, Manuel A1 - Hu, Xiaodong A1 - Woehrmann, Markus A1 - Becker, Katharina A1 - Juergensen, Nils A1 - Hubl, Moritz A1 - Mackowiak, Piotr A1 - Schneider-Ramelow, Martin A1 - Lang, Klaus-Dieter A1 - Ngo, Ha-Duong T1 - Development and Characterization of a Novel Low-Cost Water-Level and Water Quality Monitoring Sensor by Using Enhanced Screen Printing Technology with PEDOT:PSS JF - Micromachines N2 - A novel capacitive sensor for measuring the water-level and monitoring the water quality has been developed in this work by using an enhanced screen printing technology. A commonly used environment-friendly conductive polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly (styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) for conductive sensors has a limited conductivity due to its high sheet resistance. A physical treatment performed during the printing process has reduced the sheet resistance of printed PEDOT:PSS on polyethylenterephthalat (PET) substrate from 264.39 Ω/sq to 23.44 Ω/sq. The adhesion bonding force between printed PEDOT:PSS and the substrate PET is increased by using chemical treatment and tested using a newly designed adhesive peeling force test. Using the economical conductive ink PEDOT:PSS with this new physical treatment, our capacitive sensors are cost-efficient and have a sensitivity of up to 1.25 pF/mm. KW - water-level sensor KW - water quality monitoring KW - adhesive peeling force test KW - screen printing KW - poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) KW - conductive polymer KW - capacitive sensor Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:523-3789 SN - 2072-666X VL - 11 IS - 5 PB - MDPI ER -