Resumen de The Quartz-Crystal Microbalance in an Undergraduate Laboratory Experiment. I. Fundamentals and Instrumentation.
The high sensitivity of the quartz-crystal microbalance (QCM), especially to mass changes�4 to 20 x 10-9 g/Hz�makes it popular in different branches of both fundamental and applied sciences. This article presents the fundamentals of the QCM techniques and instrumentation that have been successfully used in our student laboratory in physical chemistry. We believe that this instrumentation can be applied to different systems, suited to particular teaching programs, and will be sufficiently simple to be carried out in an undergraduate laboratory. The following publications will present two experiments: the QCM as a viscosimeter to measure the viscosity of liquids with H-bonds and the QCM as a mass sensor during the electrochemical deposition and dissolution of copper.
