Regarding the ultrasound determination of density-dependent salinity in seawater, a miniature broadband (up to ~12.8 MHz at 6 dB bandwidth) fiber-tip photoacoustic transducer coated with an ~68.32 μm thick MoS2-polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) composite was developed for simultaneously measuring the temperature and density of laboratory saline solutions, along with a piezoelectric transducer (PZT) for ultrasound detection. The two parameters, respectively, ranging 20 °C to 50 °C and from 0.99 g/cm3 to 1.10 g/cm3 were measured and then extracted based on the regressive dependence on the propagation speed and attenuation of the ultrasonic wave. In terms of the established linear regression model and estimated regression characteristic parameters, the calculated temperature and density results, respectively, exhibited the extended uncertainty values of 1 °C and 1.08 × 10-3 g/cm3 (k = 2.132), accompanied with an excellent goodness of fit (R2 > 0.97) and significance of the binary linear regression (F >> F0.01). The highly consistent experimental data confirmed the accuracy of our method, thus suggesting the potential of measuring salinity in seawater using compact fiber-optic photo-induced ultrasound scheme.
Keywords: MoS2-PDMS composite; density and temperature measurement; error estimation; fiber-tip photoacoustic transducer; saline solution.