Microwave Sensor within a Microfluidic Chip for Biological Applications

Abstract

A miniaturized sensor operating in Radio Frequency region (RF) is proposed to address the need in picoliter liquid characterization. The sensor is based on a coplanar waveguide (CPW) combined with a microfluidic channel dedicated to microliter liquid characterization with perspectives for biology and single cell characterization. Using microtechnology process, the sensor has been designed on a 0.5 mm thick quartz wafer with Cr/Au electrodes. A prototype of the sensor has been fabricated and evaluated with ethanol/water mixtures at different molar fractions of ethanol. A good agreement between theoretical and measured electrical response of the sensor is observed.

Keywords

• RF characterization
• RF sensors
• liquids
• picoliter volumes
• microfluidic
• broadband
• dielectric characterization