Silavwe, E, Somjit, N and Robertson, ID (2016) A Microfluidic-Integrated SIW Lab-on-Substrate Sensor for Microliter Liquid Characterization. IEEE Sensors Journal, 16 (21). pp. 7628-7635. ISSN 1530-437X
Abstract
A novel microfluidic-integrated microwave sensor with potential application in microliter-volume biological/biomedical liquid sample characterization and quantification is presented in this paper. The sensor is designed based on the resonance method, providing the best sensing accuracy, and implemented by using a substrate-integrated-waveguide (SIW) structure combining with a rectangular slot antenna operating at 10 GHz. The device can perform accurate characterization of various liquid materials from very low to high loss, demonstrated by measurement of deionized (DI) water and methanol liquid mixtures. The measured relative permittivity, which is the real part of complex permittivity, ranges from 8.58 to 66.12, which is simply limited by the choice of test materials available in our laboratory, not any other technical considerations of the sensor. The fabricated sensor prototype requires a very small liquid volume of less than 7 µl, while still offering an overall accuracy of better than 3 %, as compared to the commercial and other published works. Key advantages of the proposed sensor are that it combines 1.) a very low-profile planar and miniaturized structure sensing microliter liquid volume; 2.) ease of design and fabrication, which makes it cost-effective to manufacture and 3.) noninvasive and contactless measurements. Moreover, since the microfluidic subsystem can potentially be detached from the SIW microwave sensor and, afterward, replaced by a new microfluidic component, the sensor can be reused with no life-cycle limitation and without degrading any figure of merit.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016, IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | SIW; Biological; permittivity measurements; resonance; slot antenna |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Electronic & Electrical Engineering (Leeds) > Pollard Institute (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 10 Aug 2016 09:01 |
Last Modified: | 20 Jan 2018 12:03 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2016.2599099 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | IEEE |
Identification Number: | 10.1109/JSEN.2016.2599099 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:103448 |