Highly Sensitive Measurement of Liquid Density in Air Using Suspended Microcapillary Resonators
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 scatter...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2015-03-01
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| Series: | Sensors |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/15/4/7650 |
| Summary: | 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. |
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| ISSN: | 1424-8220 |