Superheterodyne Microwave System for the Detection of Bioparticles with Coplanar Electrodes on a Microfluidic Platform

Abstract: The combination of microwave and microfluidic technologies has the potential to enable wireless monitoring and interaction with bioparticles, facilitating in this way the exploration of a still largely uncharted territory at the intersection of biology, communication engineering and microscale physics. Opportunely, the scientific and technical requirements of microfluidics and microwave techniques converge to the need of system miniaturization to achieve the required sensitivity levels. This work, therefore, presents the design and optimization of a measurement system for the detection of bioparticles over the frequency range $0.01$ to $10$ $\mathrm{GHz}$, with different coplanar electrodes configurations on a microfluidic platform. The design of the measurement signal-chain setup is optimized for a novel real-time superheterodyne microwave detection system. In particular, signal integrity is achieved by means of a microwave-shielded chamber, which is protected from external electromagnetic interference that may potentially impact the coplanar electrodes mounted on the microfluidic device. Additionally, analytical expressions and experimental validation of the system-level performance are provided and discussed for the different designs of the coplanar electrodes. This technique is applied to measure the electrical field perturbation produced by $10$ $\mathrm{\mu m}$ polystyrene beads with a concentration of $10^5$ $\mathrm{beads/mL}$, and flowing at a rate of $10$ $\mathrm{\mu L/m}$. The achieved SNR is in the order of $40$ $\mathrm{dB}$ for the three coplanar electrodes considered.