Highly sensitive measurement of liquid density in air using suspended microcapillary resonators

Sensors (Basel). 2015 Mar 30;15(4):7650-7. doi: 10.3390/s150407650.

Abstract

We report the use of commercially available glass microcapillaries as micromechanical resonators for real-time monitoring of the mass density of a liquid that flows through the capillary. The vibration of a suspended region of the microcapillary is optically detected by measuring the forward scattering of a laser beam. The resonance frequency of the liquid filled microcapillary is measured for liquid binary mixtures of ethanol in water, glycerol in water and Triton in ethanol. The method achieves a detection limit in an air environment of 50 µg/mL that is only five times higher than that obtained with state-of-the-art suspended microchannel resonators encapsulated in vacuum. The method opens the door to novel advances for miniaturized total analysis systems based on microcapillaries with the add-on of mechanical transduction for sensing the rheological properties of the analyzed fluids without the need for vacuum encapsulation of the resonators.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Limit of Detection
  • Rheology / instrumentation*