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Reduced Graphene Oxide Soil Moisture Sensor with Improved Stability and Testing on Vadose Zone Soils
Journal
Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering
ISSN
18761100
Date Issued
2022-01-01
Author(s)
Patle, Kamlesh S.
siddiqui, Salman
Kalita, Hemen K.
Palaparthy, Vinay S.
Abstract
The vadose zone is the unsaturated soil surface that ranges from the earth surface to the groundwater table. Availability of the soil moisture in the vadose zone is crucial for the proper crop development and will lead to precise irrigation. Soil moisture sensors are extensively reported to measure the water content in the vadose zone. This work focuses on demonstrating the soil moisture micro-sensor, where reduced graphene oxide (rGO) is used as the sensing film. rGO is synthesized using the annealing of the graphene oxide sheets at 200 °C for 5 min. As-prepared rGO is drop casted on the inter-digitated electrodes with feature size of about 1500 µm × 2400 µm. The fabricated micro-sensors response is studied on the loamy sand soil collected from the agriculture field. Lab measurements show the sensor resistance varies from around 101 to 3 MΩ, when gravimetric water content (GWC) varies from 2 to 12%. The sensors response time is about 60–75 s, and the sensor output is stable for 5 months.
Volume
811
Subjects