A microfluidic capacitance sensor for fluid discrimination and characterization

A microfluidic device with embedded capacitive sensing is proposed. The purpose of the device is fluid discrimination and characterization in a microchannel on the basis of the dielectric permittivity. The device is fabricated in a hybrid cost-effective technology which innovatively combines PDMS (PolyDiMethylSiloxane) soft photolithography and screen printing techniques. A microchannel, realized in a PDMS layer, is placed in the field of a sensing capacitor formed by electrodes screen-printed on a glass substrate. Fluids inside the microchannel affect the capacitance, that is in the order of femtofarads, which is measured by a tailored electronic interface system. The electronic system features a sensitivity of 100 V/pF and a resolution threshold of 0.06 fF. Experimental results obtained for different fluids injected in the microchannel demonstrate the ability of the system to discriminate the fluids and to estimate their dielectric permittivity both as pure samples and as mixtures at varying solute fractions. This makes the device a promising building block for fluid mixing monitoring in microfluidic systems. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.