Water uptake kinetics in anti-corrosion organic films with a high resolution microbalance oscillator sensor

In this paper, a stable quartz crystal oscillator sensor for measuring the water uptake in organic coatings is presented. The phase noise performance of the oscillator is investigated in order to characterize the oscillator's resolution during the water uptake process. The result is a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensor able to determine the rate and amount of water absorbed into anti-corrosion cataphoretic coatings with a resolution of 360 pg/cm2 for 1 s sampling interval.