Differential Capacitively Coupled Contactless

Conductivity Detection (DC4D) Sensor for Detection

of Object in Microfluidic Channel
Q.L. Do1, T.T. Bui1,2, T.T.H. Tran3, K. Kikuchi2, M. Aoyagi2, T. Chu Duc1*
1
Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU), Vietnam (*[email protected])
2
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan
3
Post and Telecommunication Institute of Technology (PTIT), Vietnam

Abstract—In this paper, a novel design of a differential sensor structure is a conductivity detection technique, which
capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection (DC4D) was proposed by Fracassi da Silva et al. and Zemann et al.
sensor with thin polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) protective layer independently in 1998 in order to avoid the above issues [7, 8].
has been developed for detection of objects in microfluidic Up to date, application based on the C4D technique in detecting
channel. The capacitive sensor consists of four adjacent impurities and estimating their velocity in fluidic channel is
electrodes which are arranged to form differential coplanar researched and developed by many research groups despite of
capacitor structures in order to achieve a high sensitivity and its difficulties and limitations [6]. There are several
robust operation. The differential capacitance is changed when a measurement methods that are developed to against difficulties
micro particle (living cell for instance) crosses the microfluidic
and limitations of the conventional C4D technique. A grounded
channel. This proposed sensor can be used for both conductive
and non-conductive fluid media. The simulation inspection
shield between the excitation electrode and the pick-up
reveals that the sensor can detect an object with diameter down electrode can be used to prevent stray capacitance [6, 10, 11] or
to 10 µm in a 50×100 µm cross-section channel, with capacitance take advantage of parallel resonance effect to remove the
change up to 0.05 fF. This novel design can not only detect the influence of stray capacitance and coupling capacitances [12].
present of an object but also volume, velocity, as well as electrical Some designs use this resonator method to measure the
property (conduct/non-conduct) of the investigated object. conductivity and flow detection [13, 14]. Another method is to
take advantage of differential technique in 3-electrode C4D
Keywords—Capacitive sensor, microfluidic flow, air bubble structure (DC4D) to increase the sensitivity of sensor [15] but
detection, DC4D. the 3-electrode structure can bring the disadvantage because
when there is an object inside the channel, it can influence to
I. INTRODUCTION all 3 electrodes. This issue causes the erroneous result in
Detection of objects in microfluidic channel is very measurement.
important and can be found in many applications, such as in In this study, the 4-electrode structure, which are covered
pharmacology, MEMS, biology, analytical chemistry, food with a thin PDMS protective layer, are arranged in pair in order
analysis, water-quality control and especially in medical[1]. to reduce the interference between them. An optimal design
The appearance of air bubble in the patient’s blood vessels is employing the differential capacitance between coplanar
dangerous in case of the unpredictable of cerebral embolism electrodes inside the micro fluidic channel is proposed (Fig.1).
can lead to instant death [2]. The detection of strange cell in the Four adjacent electrodes are laid on glass substrate and
blood vessel plays a crucial role in diagnosis or early detection arranged close together in pair to form differential coplanar
of some diseases including cancer. In MEMS, the appearance structures. The micro-channel structure is fabricated inside the
of a particle in the microfluidic channel can affect significantly PDMS substrate. We take advantage of the self-bonding ability
to the response of the flow such as the flow velocity, the fluidic of these two substrate’s material in order to attach the PDMS
pure quality. substrate on the glass substrate. When an object goes through
Among the different physical techniques for detection of the active area of the sensor in the channel, the differential
objects in micro fluidic channel such as optical, ultrasonic, capacitance will be changed, which leads to the change in the
electrical sensing based on contact and contactless mechanism, output signal of measurement device.
capacitive sensing emerged as the best technique thanks to the
simple fabrication and measurement setup, as well as II. MICROFLUIDIC CAPACITIVE SENSOR DESIGN AND
minimization capability [3-5]. Normally, metal electrodes (e.g., SIMULATION
gold) are in direct contact with liquid then contamination and The working of the conventional capacitive sensor is based
fouling of electrodes during continuous use consequence the on the change of parameters in the capacitor structure, which
shorten life time of the sensor system. Otherwise, the resulting results in the change of its capacitance. Capacitive sensors with
polarization effect and the electrochemical reaction will have two parallel electrodes structure are being used in several
negative impact on the measurement results [6]. The applications. The capacitance in this case is given by:
capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection (C4D)

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 .
Fig. 1. Proposal of a DC4D sensor..

εA Fig. 2. Cross-sessional view (a), side view

v (b), and DC4D sensor model (c).
C= (1)
d
capacitance between pick-up capacitor and the reference
where ε is the permittivity of the dielectric off medium between capacitor. By taking advantagge of differential technique in
the two plates, A is the effective area of the electrode
e plate and measuring the capacitance chaange between those capacitors,
d is the distance between the two elecctrodes. In micro even a small change in capacittance could also result in a great
fabrication, the capacitive sensor structure isi mainly coplanar output signal of system. Therrefore, the DC4D structure can
structure. The capacitance of two parallel, coplanar
c and semi- bring a high-sensitivity in deteccting the appearance of an object
infinite conducting plates separated by a gap distance of 2a are in the microfluidic flow. In this study, we simulated the
embedded within a uniform dielectric mediuum of permittivity capacitance of sensor when therre is an object moving inside the
εr is: channel. The sensing structure was designed and simulated by
finite element method (FEM) using Ansoft Maxwell. The
2 simulation will figure out how the capacitance of coplanar
2ε0 εr l w
C= ln ቈቀ1+ ቁ + ටቀ1+ wቁ -1቉ (2) capacitive sensor structure chhanges with the movement of
π a a investigated object’s material innside the channel.
In this simulation, the miicrofluidic capacitive sensor is
where ε0 is the vacuum permittivity, l and w is the length and designed with three main parts: PDMS part, electrodes and the
the width of the electrode pair, respectively [16]. Recently, glass substrate. The micro-chhannel structure and the inlet,
most of capacitive fluidic sensor based on the mechanism: a outlet of chip are laid inside thee PDMS substrate (ε = 2.7, σ = 3
change of capacitance, which caused by b a change of × 10-12 S/m). Four gold electroodes (ε = 1, σ = 41×106 S/m) are
permittivity and conductivity of material beetween electrodes, laid on the glass substrate (ε = 5.5,
5 σ = 0 S/m) and covered by a
can be caused by a change in fluidic channeel. The dielectric is thin PDMS layer in order to avoid the contact between the
different for each material or different liqquids. Hence, the fluidic and the electrodes. The electrodes
e are located inside and
change of material inside channel can leadd to the change of along to the micro-channel in the PDMS substrate. The
sensor’s capacitance. Therefore, an object in
i a homogeneous microchannel is filled up withh fresh water (ε = 81, σ = 0.01
fluidic flow can be easily detected. S/m). The tin, SiO2 and air objeect are simulated.
In this paper, the DC4D design with 4 electrodes
e to form The dimension of electrodees and the channel are shown in
pick-up capacitor and the reference capacitor (see Fig. 1). The Table 1. The microchannel hass height of 50 µm and width of
change of capacitance can be measured wiith the differential 100 µm. The width of four sqquare electrodes is 120 µm. The
technique. When an object moves along the microchannel distance between first and secoond electrode is 30 µm while the
passing the pick-up capacitor, it producees the unbalance distance between the second annd the third electrode is 80 µm.
The thickness of gold electroddes gets value of 300 nm while
TABLE I. PARAMETERS OF CAPACITIVE FLLUIDIC SENSOR the thickness of the contactless PDMS layer is 10 µm.
Symbol Quantity Unit III. FABRICATION AN
ND MEASUREMENT SETUP
h Micro-channel’s 50µm The fabrication process forr the sensor is illustrated in Fig.
height 3. For PDMS part, the PDMS monomer
m and curing agent were
b Micro-channel’s width 100µm mixed at a 10/1 ratio. Then it is poured on the mold of Su-8
g1 Electrode’s gap 30µm master on a silicon wafer. The PDMS mixture is degased until
there is no longer foam on its surface, followed by baking at
g2 Electrode’s gap 80µm 70 C for 6 hours. Then, it is reeleased from the Su-8 mold after
w Electrode’s width 120µm being cooled down to room teemperature. The chip’s inlet and
outlet is created by punching of
o holes on the PDMS platform.

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 Fig. 3. Fabrication process. Fig. 4. Block diagram of the measurement system.

Otherwise, for the glass substrate, after the photolithography

process, the glass wafer is covered by a thin gold layer through
evaporation process. The excessive gold was released through
lift-off step. After that, the gold electrodes are covered by a
thin PDMS film by spin-coating in order to construct a
contactless layer between electrodes and the electrolyte in the
microchannel. The surface of PDMS and glass substrate are
then activated using a gentle treatment of O2 plasma (30
seconds, 50 W for PDMS part; 6 minutes, 50 W for glass
substrate, respectively) before they are aligned and bonded to
each other using a high precision chip bonder (CA-300ss,
Bondtech Co., Ltd.,).
Figure 4 shows the measurement setup for the proposed Fig. 5. The fabricated chip.
DC4D micro fluidic sensor. In this work, a sinusoidal signal
with a specific magnitude and frequency is applied to the two
excitation electrodes. The two pick-up electrodes voltage
decides the input signal of a differential amplifier, rectifier, and 0.5
low pass filter circuits. The output voltage data is then acquired
0.4
to the PC/Laptop through NI data acquisition card (DAQPad-
6016) and then be processed by using LabVIEW software. 0.3
Simultaneously, a microscope with high speed camera is used
ΔC - fF

0.2
to record the movement of object inside the channel.
0.1
IV. RESUSTS AND DISCUSSIONS
0
Figure 5 shows the fabricated chip which has the dimension
of 10 mm × 20 mm (width × length) with the inlet and outlet. -0.1
Tin particle
The insets show the image observed by microscope of the inlet -0.2 Air bubble
and the channel with sensor structure. We could confirm that SiO2 particle
all of the electrodes are well aligned with the microchannel -150 -100 -50 0 50 100 150
thanks to the high precision of the bonder. The structure can be Particle position - μm
easily observed by microscope thanks to the transparent Fig. 6. Differential capacitance output of the DC4D sensor. Object diameter
property of PDMS and glass. = 30 µm.

The simulation results in Fig. 6 show that the maximum property of the object can be estimated through analyzing the
change of capacitance between electrodes is nearly 0.2 fF when output signal.
a 30 µm diameter air bubble moving in the fresh water channel. In addition, tin particle, air bubble and silicon dioxide
Meanwhile, the change is about 0.3 fF in case of a tin particle particle objects in fresh water channel, with diameter variable
with same diameter. The figure also shows that the direction of from 10 to 34 µm is also implemented. The capacitance change
the capacitance change in case of conductive object (such as tin is shown in Fig. 7. As can be seen, the capacitance change of
particle) is opposite to the case of non-conductive object (such sensor in case of tin particle is higher than in case of air bubble
as air bubble, silicon-dioxide particle). Therefore, the electrical and SiO2 particle. The insets illustrate the distribution of

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 0.45
Silicon-Dioxide particle simulated by using FEM tool. A measurement setup was
0.4 Tin particle
Air bubble
designed and implemented to monitor the capacitance change.
0.35 The DC4D sensor was also fabricated with micro machining
0.3 technology. Experimental measurements with particles and
living cell are in progress. This proposed DC4D sensor can be
Δ C - fF

0.25
used for detection of strange particle, air bubble in microfluidic
0.2 flow or cell in medical devices and systems.
0.15 ACKNOWLEDGMENT
0.1 This work is partly supported by program carried out under
0.05 the framework of Japan-Asia Youth Exchange Program in
Science (Sakura Exchange Program in Science) administered
0
0 5 10 15 20 by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). We also
Particle volume - pl would like to thank Shunsuke Nemoto from 3D Integration
Fig. 7. Maximum differential capacitance output versus particle’s volume. System Group, Nanoelectronics Research Institute (NeRI),
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and
Technology (AIST) for his assistance in chip packaging.
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