Method to quantify the effect of passivation layer in bio-impedance sensors

Shree Narayanan; Mehdi Nikkhah; Jeannine S Strobl; Masoud Agah

doi:10.1109/IEMBS.2009.5334389

Method to quantify the effect of passivation layer in bio-impedance sensors

Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2009:2009:3783-6. doi: 10.1109/IEMBS.2009.5334389.

Authors

Shree Narayanan¹, Mehdi Nikkhah, Jeannine S Strobl, Masoud Agah

Affiliation

¹ The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, 24060, USA. snsnair@vt.edu

PMID: 19964816
DOI: 10.1109/IEMBS.2009.5334389

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of the passivation layer in a bio-impedance sensor. A sensor with 20 sensing sites has been designed, fabricated using a simple two mask process and tested. We have cultured in-vivo MDA-MB231 mammary cells and recorded the impedance from 1kHz to 1MHz. Processing the recorded data brings to light the drawback of the passivation layer which results in a drop in sensitivity of 13%. Simulation results based on parameters extracted from measurements re-affirm the drop in sensitivity. Thus, the passivation layer needs to be provided a special consideration in future design of the sensor as it can modify the response of the sensor.

MeSH terms

Algorithms
Biophysics
Biosensing Techniques
Breast Neoplasms / pathology*
Cell Line, Tumor
Computer Simulation
Electric Impedance*
Electrophysiology / methods
Equipment Design
Humans
Microelectrodes
Microscopy, Electron, Scanning / methods
Optics and Photonics
Transducers