Droplet sensing using small and compact high-Q planar resonator based on

impedance matching technique

, ,
Hee-Jo Lee and Jong-Gwan Yook

Citation: Rev. Sci. Instrum. 87, 094706 (2016); doi: 10.1063/1.4963701

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4963701
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Published by the American Institute of Physics
 REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS 87, 094706 (2016)

Droplet sensing using small and compact high-Q planar resonator

based on impedance matching technique
Hee-Jo Lee1,a) and Jong-Gwan Yook2,a)
1
Department of Physics Education, Daegu University, Gyeongsan 38453, South Korea
2
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, South Korea
(Received 23 March 2016; accepted 14 September 2016; published online 30 September 2016)
In this paper, we demonstrate the sensing feasibility of the proposed high-Q resonator using a
phosphate-buffered saline droplet at microwave frequencies. In the experimental results, the resonant
frequency, signal level, and Q-factor of the S21-parameter with and without a 1-l droplet were
changed to about 230 MHz, 32 dB, and 1500, respectively. The resonator system was found to
be suitable for droplet sensing with a small volume due to its small and compact scheme. This
resonator system is expected to play an important role in droplet sensing with different dielectric
constants. Published by AIP Publishing. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4963701]

I. INTRODUCTION RF sensing platform. In this study, we also demonstrate the

Generally, any material has electrically unique charac-
teristics that are dependent on its dielectric, magnetic, and
conductive properties. In particular, these characteristics are
strongly related to the interaction between the material and the
time-varying electromagnetic field in the radio-frequency (RF)
and microwave regions. Based on the interaction with material
and field, many measurement techniques for dielectric mate-
rials have been reported over the past few decades.14 Unfor-
tunately, however, these approaches have been focused on the
dielectric measurement of the solid and/or semi-solid dielec-
tric materials. These conventional measurement systems5 were
not only very expensive, bulky, and complex but also required
a large sample quantity.
For these reasons, research and development into a sim-
ple and cost-efficient scheme that requires only a small sam-
ple quantity as well as solution is of primary importance.
In recent years, various non-contact and non-invasive micro-
wave detection techniques for liquid sensing have increased
the importance of the discrimination and characterization of
diverse biocompatible solutions.611 For example, cell detec-
tion within a microfluidic channel was attempted in a variety
of ways because the target cell could be differentiated from
the solution via their dielectric properties.1214 In addition, a
microwave-microfluidics integrated system15 was developed
for droplet detection capable of performing high-throughput
and content sensing of an individual droplet without chemical
or physical intrusion. These systems employing the resonance
of the S-parameter based on spiral resonator can attain solu-
tion discrimination with different concentrations. However,
they may have limitations for sensing resolution and dielectric
characterization due to the low-Q factor of the resonator. To
overcome these drawbacks, an optimized resonator system
associated with RF active circuitry system16 is needed. We
therefore propose a small and compact high-Q planar resonator
based on impedance matching method compatible with the
a)Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic ad-
dresses: hjlee@daegu.ac.kr and jgyook@yonsei.ac.kr
sensing feasibility using a phosphate-buffered saline (PBS)
droplet, which is a well-defined buffer solution commonly
used in biological research, in the microwave region.
II. DESIGN
In this work, the designed resonator is basically a small
and compact inductor-capacitor (LC) circuit with split gaps
consisting of a glass, a glass polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)
with hole, and a bucket for droplets on the microstrip line. The
resonator system simulated by a full-wave electromagnetic
solver shows a half-wavelength (g/2) resonance at 11.74 GHz
according to the following formula:
g c
l = 2Rav = = , (1)
2 2 eff f 0
where Rav, g, eff , c, and f 0 (=1/2 LC) are the average
radius, guided wavelength, effective permittivity, light speed,
and resonant frequency, respectively. Here, Rav (= 1.04 mm)
of the resonator was defined, and eff (3.6) was also calcu-
lated as the average relative permittivity of the glass ( r
4.6) and the PDMS ( r 2.6). Using the defined values in
Eq. (1), we could confirm that the calculated circumference
(l 6.53 mm) is approximately similar to the half-wavelength
( g/2 6.73 mm) at the resonant frequency. In addition, the
resonator reveals a circularly resonant mode with asymmetric
current intensity, as shown in Fig. 1(a).
III. FABRICATON AND MEASUREMENT
The sample was separately prepared, as shown in
Fig. 1(b). First of all, the LC circuit was fabricated by
commercialized printed circuit board (PCB) process.6 To
fabricate the glass-bonded PDMS with a hole, the thin glass
was washed with acetone, rinsed with deionized (DI) water,
and completely dried by using an air gun. To fabricate the
PDMS with a hole, liquid PDMS and a reticulating agent
(Sylgard 184, Dow Corning Co.) at a ratio of one-to-nine
in a Petri dish were mixed and the mixture was poured into

0034-6748/2016/87(9)/094706/4/$30.00 87, 094706-1 Published by AIP Publishing.

094706-2 H.-J. Lee and J.-G. Yook Rev. Sci. Instrum. 87, 094706 (2016)

FIG. 1. Schematic of the resonator system combined with PDMS and glass. (a) Dimensions of the LC circuit are s = w = 0.2 mm and R avg = 1.04 mm, and the
hole radius of the PDMA is R hole = 0.90 mm. (b) The photograph shows a fabricated sample. The black and the blue arrows in (a) indicate the upper (input port)
and lower (output port) lines, respectively.

FIG. 2. Sample preparation for the glass-bonded PDMS.

FIG. 3. RF system for sample measurement. (a) The overall measurement system with a test fixture zig system is schematically shown. (b) A photograph of the
embedded sample in the test fixture zig system. (c) Each wetting size of the 1-l and 2-l PBS droplets on the glass is shown.

the molding frame, after which the bubbles were removed by
vacuum process. After soft baking for 50 min at 80 C, the
PDMS pattern was demolded. The bulky PDMS was diced
with rectangular parallelepipeds and their holes were formed
by a punching tool. Finally, the glass was combined with
the PDMS by exposure to O2 plasma for 1 min for strong
bonding. The overall procedure of glass-bonded PDMS with
hole is shown in Fig. 2.
Figure 3(a) shows a schematic of the measurement
system, which consisted of a universal test fixture (3680K,
094706-3 H.-J. Lee and J.-G. Yook
Anritsu Co.) associated with a two-port vector network
analyzer (E8364A, Agilent Co.). The sample was measured
as follows: First, the overall measurement system was
calibrated with a short-open-load-thru (SOLT) method using
an electronic calibration kit (N4693A, Agilent Co.). Next,
the sample was embedded on the zig system, as shown in
Fig. 3(b), and was then perfectly matched with glass-bonded
PDMS in the desired frequency region. Meanwhile, to find the
suitable volume of a droplet in the PDMS hole, each droplet
with volumes of 1-l and 2-l was considered on the glass,
as shown in Fig. 3(c). In the resonator system, a 1-l volume
droplet was found to be suitable for the PDMS hole. Here,
the used droplet volume was the smallest size that could be
implemented by handling a pipette.
IV. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
In order to validate the sensing feasibility of the proposed
resonator system, we investigated the change of resonance
characteristics, such as frequency, signal level, and Q-value
change, of S21-parameter (or transmission coefficient) using a
droplet of PBS solution (1, pH 7.4) via the RF measurement
system.
Figs. 4(a) and 4(b) show the results of the measured
magnitude and phase of the S21-parameter in the resonator
system without a droplet, i.e., the bare resonator system. These
results indicated that the resonator was exactly matched with
50 impedance via the glass-bonded PDMS because the
arrow indicates the central point on the Smith chart, as shown
in Fig. 4(a). Here, the glass-bonded PDMS was used as a
tunable material for impedance matching of 50 . Using this
principle, the proposed resonator system exhibited a high-Q
characteristic, with an S21 level and Q-value of about 68.7 dB
and 1565 at 11.73 GHz, respectively. Similarly, Figs. 4(c)
and 4(d) show the results of the measured magnitude and
FIG. 4. Simulated and measured results of the resonator system with and without a PBS droplet. (a) Each S21-magnitude of the simulated and measured
resonator system without a droplet is shown. The red arrow of the inset Smith chart indicates that the resonator is exactly matched with 50 impedance. (b) Its
corresponding phase is shown. (c) The S21-magnitude of the simulated and measured resonator with a droplet is shown. (d) Its corresponding phase is shown.
Rev. Sci. Instrum. 87, 094706 (2016)
TABLE I. Comparison between the resonator systems with and without a
PBS droplet.
Resonator system Resonator system
Configuration quantities without a PBS droplet with a PBS droplet
Resonant frequency (GHz) 11.73 (11.74) 11.50 (11.50)
S21 level (dB) 68.70 (57.60) 36.80 (35.70)
Loaded Q-factor 1565 60
phase of the S21-parameter in the resonator system with a
droplet. As shown in Fig. 4(c), when the 1-l volume droplet
was dropped in the PDMS hole using a pipette, the resonator
system exhibited the low-Q characteristic, with an S21 level and
Q-value of about 36.8 dB and 60 at 11.50 GHz, respectively.
On the other hand, when the droplet was completely removed
from the PDMS hole, the resonance of the S21-parameter was
immediately restored to the original state.
From the measured results, the sensing characteristics
of the resonator system are summarized in Table I and the
parenthesized values represent the simulated results. The tabu-
lated data reveal that the resonant frequency of the resonator
system with a droplet was clearly shifted toward a lower fre-
quency region, as predicted in Eq. (1), and simultaneously,
the S21 signal level was considerably increased compared to
the bare resonator system due to high relative permittivity and
conductivity of the PBS solution. However, the Q-value was
drastically decreased because a water droplet is a kind of lossy
dielectric material.
For the simulation, the overall resonator system with a
droplet was fabricated as shown in Fig. 5. The relative dielec-
tric constant ( r ) and loss factor (tan ) of the semi-droplet
were obtained from the Debye formula (supplementary mate-
rial) and the conductivity was set to be variable. A 1-l volume
semi-droplet (R = 0.8 mm) on the glass shown in Fig. 5(a) was
094706-4 H.-J. Lee and J.-G. Yook
FIG. 5. Schematic of the resonator system with a PBS droplet. (a) Topology of the droplet controlled by a pipette. (b) Electric and (c) magnetic field distributions
within the droplet.
minutely meshed by element-length-based refinement, with a
maximum length of 0.1 mm. From the simulated results (red
dashed line) shown in Fig. 4, the estimated relative constant,
loss factor, and conductivity of the PBS semi-droplet were esti-
mated to be approximately 63, 0.76, and 1.6 S/m, respectively.
This droplet exhibited a high conductivity compared to that
of ordinary water because the used PBS droplet was a water-
based salt solution containing sodium hydrogen phosphate, so-
dium chloride, potassium chloride, and potassium dihydrogen
phosphate.
Figs. 5(b) and 5(c) show that the effect of the electric
field was strongly dominant over that of the magnetic field and
that the electric field represents an inhomogeneous distribution
within the droplet because of the asymmetric surface current,
as shown in Fig. 1(a).
V. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, we have not only demonstrated the sensing
feasibility of a small PBS droplet using the compact high-Q
planar resonator system but have also estimated the dielectric
characteristics of the droplet via a numerical method based
on measured data. The experimental results revealed that the
sensing parameters, frequency, signal level, and Q-value of
our resonator system can be considerably changed compared
to those of the bare resonator system without a droplet. Fi-
nally, the small and compact scheme of the resonator system
gives it compatibility with an RF wireless sensing system.
Rev. Sci. Instrum. 87, 094706 (2016)
In the future, we expect our resonator system to be capable
of discriminating between solutions with different dielectric
constants.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
See supplementary material for the Debye model as a
function of the frequency for water.
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