ABSTRACT
There are two basic elements in the operation of sensors. The first is the physical or chemical interaction between the environment and the sensing material altering the material properties (“sensing effect”). The second, the socalled “transduction mechanism” inside the sensor structure, converts this material property change into a useful signal that then holds information about the environment-material interaction. In this chapter, a selected group of those sensing effects will be described that may have important roles in biomedical sensors. The reason for devoting a special chapter for this description is that many sensors may be built based on similar sensing effects, although they use different transducer structures and may be used for the measurement of different parameters. Thus, we cannot distinguish all sensing phenomena according to the measurand.
