The Polymer Sensors and Devices Group designs and develops sensors from new materials, integrates them into sensor arrays and systems and applies them to a range of measurement problems.
Applications: range from medical sensing, human motion, environmental and chemical sensing, and process analytics. Sensors detect or measure parameters in the physical world and transfer data to the digital world.
Skills: Analogue to digital transference skills are useful skills for students in the 21st Century in that digitally sensed data can be processed using statistical and signal processing concepts, and analysed using artificial intelligence.
The skills being developed will prepare students for careers in digital manufacturing, digital twins and smart factories, in chemical engineering process plants and medical device characterisation and testing.
Students will learn how to:
- Design, build and characterize sensors from polymer materials functionalized or interrogated with light.
- Process the data generated.
- Combine basic physical and electrical methods to optimize sensors and extract data, and integrate into systems.
- Create sensor arrays to monitor a multitude of measurands.
Experimental work performed for a dissertation project will evaluate the performance of sensors that could ultimately be applied to monitoring and process problems in difficult environments, remotely or on process plants or embedded in the human body or environmental monitoring in remote and exposed field conditions.
The research group has worked on measurements ranging from nuclear decommissioning, remote sensing on gas pipelines, energy harvesting, gait, balance and exercise analysis, fermentation, chemical and bioprocess monitoring, biofouling in cooling water systems, and sensors to detect sweating, moisture, respiration, heart rate and walking.
Novel Polymer Sensor Technologies: We have used laser and photonic technologies to create original sensors from optical fibres and laser processing of polymers to create laser induced graphene.
Example dissertation projects.
- Polymer Optical Fibre Sensor for measuring patient vital signs under mattress.
- Optical on line sensor to monitor alcohol content of distillate in alcohol distillation process .
- Polymer Optical Fibre Sensor for Environmental Monitoring.
- Environmental Monitoring and Control Using an Energy Harvesting Autonomous and Wireless Sensor Array
Polymer Sensors & Devices@Galway 