A new factor affecting the acceleration sensitivity of the resonance frequency of quartz crystal resonators

Viscosity variation in human fluids, such as Synovial Fluid (SF) or Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF), can be used as a diagnostic factor; however, the sample volume obtained for analysis is usually small, making it difficult to measure its viscosity. On the other hand, Quartz Crystal Resonators (QCR) have been used widely in sensing applications due to their accuracy, cost, and size. This work provides the design and validation of a new viscosity measurement system based on quartz crystal resonators for low volume fluids, leading to the development of a sensor called “ViSQCT” as a prototype for a new medical diagnostic tool. The proposed method is based on measuring the resonance frequency at the crystal’s maximum conductance point through a frequency sweep, where crystals with 10 MHz fundamental resonance frequency were used. For validation purposes, artificial fluids were developed to simulate SFs and CFs in healthy and pathological conditions as experiment phantoms. A commercial QCR based system was also used for validation since its methodology differs from ours. A conventional rotational viscometer was used as a reference for calibration purposes. ViSQCT demonstrates the capability to measure the sample’s viscosity differentiation between healthy and pathological fluid phantoms and shows that it can be used as a basis for a diagnostic method of several pathologies related to the studied biological fluids. However, some performance differences between both QCR-based systems compared to the reference system deserves further investigation.

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Feature Difference of Interaction between Various Organic Solvent Vapors and Metal Phthalocyanines Coated on Quartz Crystal

Advanced Materials Research ◽

10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.55-57.305 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 55-57 ◽

pp. 305-308

Author(s):

Tippavan Hongkachern ◽

W. Suwannet ◽

Rawat Jaisutti ◽

S. Pratontep ◽

Tanakorn Osotchan

Keyword(s):

Thin Film ◽

Organic Solvent ◽

Resonance Frequency ◽

Frequency Shift ◽

Quartz Crystal ◽

Copper Phthalocyanine ◽

Principal Component ◽

Zinc Phthalocyanine ◽

Quartz Crystal Resonators ◽

Solvent Vapors

Interaction between organic solvent vapors, zinc phthalocyanine (ZnPc) and copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) coated on quartz crystal resonators were investigated for various types of organic solvent vapors including acetone, propanol, ethanol, tetrahydrofuran, methanol, nail lacquer remover, 100 Pipers and Masterblend whiskies. The major different features of the resonance frequency shift as a function of time were extracted in order to employ in gas sensor. The sensor consists of ZnPc or CuPc thin film with the thickness of ~300 nm coated on quartz crystal with resonance frequency of 2 MHz. It used as a transducer by convert the surface adsorption into the frequency shift. When the odor interacts with ZnPc or CuPc layer, the quartz frequency normally decreases from the fundamental frequency due to the additional mass on quartz surface. The different types of organic solvent have different sensitivity to the thin film and these changing lead to the different frequency shift characteristics. The frequency shift were collected and the selected data points at the time of 5, 10, 15, 20, 70, 75, and 80 minutes after dropping alcohol were used to extract the feature by using the principal component analysis (PCA) in order to classify the type of alcohol. The PCA can be used to identify the major characteristic difference of various organic solvent interactions. The main features can be identified by the amount of the frequency shift and the decay characteristics.

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