Sensors 2015, 15(7), 17715-17727; https://doi.org/10.3390/s150717715
Electrochemical Impedance Sensors for Monitoring Trace Amounts of NO3 in Selected Growing Media
1
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Laval University, Quebec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada
2
Department of Chemistry, Laval University, Quebec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada
3
Centre for Optics, Photonics and Lasers (COPL), Laval University, Quebec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada
4
Ministère des Forêts, de la Faune et des Parcs. Quebec, G1P 3W8, Canada
5
JIRU Instituto de Quimica, Araraquara-SP 14800-060, Brazil
†
These authors contributed equally to this work.
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Antonio Puliafito
Received: 30 April 2015 / Revised: 27 June 2015 / Accepted: 9 July 2015 / Published: 21 July 2015
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors and Smart Cities)
Abstract
With the advent of smart cities and big data, precision agriculture allows the feeding of sensor data into online databases for continuous crop monitoring, production optimization, and data storage. This paper describes a low-cost, compact, and scalable nitrate sensor based on electrochemical impedance spectroscopy for monitoring trace amounts of NO3− in selected growing media. The nitrate sensor can be integrated to conventional microelectronics to perform online nitrate sensing continuously over a wide concentration range from 0.1 ppm to 100 ppm, with a response time of about 1 min, and feed data into a database for storage and analysis. The paper describes the structural design, the Nyquist impedance response, the measurement sensitivity and accuracy, and the field testing of the nitrate sensor performed within tree nursery settings under ISO/IEC 17025 certifications. View Full-Text
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).
Share & Cite This Article
MDPI and ACS Style
Ghaffari, S.A.; Caron, W.-O.; Loubier, M.; Normandeau, C.-O.; Viens, J.; Lamhamedi, M.S.; Gosselin, B.; Messaddeq, Y. Electrochemical Impedance Sensors for Monitoring Trace Amounts of NO3 in Selected Growing Media. Sensors 2015, 15, 17715-17727.