Microfluidic devices and Gigahertz sensor applied to measurements of liquid mixtures concentration
 
Microfluidic devices and Gigahertz sensor applied to measurements of liquid mixtures concentration 
 
Salomao Moraes Da Silva, Johan Stiens, J.W. Swart, Stanislav Moshkalev, Yuchen Zhang, Vladimir Matvejev, Werner Vandermeiren, Cathleen De Tandt
 
Abstract 

This paper reports on the performance of a sub-THz liquid sensor tool coupled to a microfluidic platform. Non-invasive, non-destructive and on-line measurements are demonstrated for the determination of ethanol concentration and for controlling bymicromixer device. We have developed a label-free chemical sensing methodology coupling a sub-terahertz sensor technology in microfluidic devices fabricated on glass and polydimethylsiloxane. The concept of sensor in micromixer applications operating at 60 GHz for known ethanol concentration ranging 0% to 100%, with a corresponding dynamic range of 2.79dB. The sensor allowed establishing the correlation between the mass flow rate and the ethanol concentration in the microfluidic system, where two-stream lines form the mixture in laminar flows, with Reynolds number < 13.54 and Peclet number > 25700. We demonstrated on-line sensing and linear control of ethanol concentration on demand with a small variation of 0.32% (v/v) between measured and required ethanol concentration.