The proposed interdisciplinary project deals with the design of original and advanced electromagnetic sensor configurations in the frequency range from 40 to 600 GHz, aiming at extending the detection modalities in the field of pharmaceutical separation techniques, more in particular liquid chromatography. The response of liquid materials in this frequency range is determined by the collective behavior of constituting molecules of the liquids. When adding a pharmaceutical product or impurity to the solvent, this collective behavior will be
disturbed and will be translated in a sensor response change. However, to make sensible use of mm waves in the field of chromatography, both research domains need to intimately crossfertilize to understand the requirements for the sensor configurations and to develop the theoretical understanding of the interactions between pharmaceutical compounds and the solvents. The performance of these novel designed mm wave sensors will be compared with well-established detection techniques in chromatographic systems of today, but also the miniaturized micro- and nanoscopic systems of tomorrow. Finally specific pharmaceutical case studies will be elaborated on. Potential advantages of the novel detection principle are as
follows: no needs for fluoresce labeling, chromophoric groups in the structure nor removal of coating materials of the fluidic systems.
Runtime: 2012 - 2015