Filling volume sensor for microfluidic applications based on thermic transient effect and standard PCB technology

Author

Gross, Peter ; Ender, Ferenc ; Sántha, Hunor

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. Technol., Budapest Univ. of Technol. & Econ., Budapest, Hungary

fYear

2010

fDate

12-16 May 2010

Firstpage

443

Lastpage

447

Abstract

A liquid volume sensor has been developed on standard printed circuit board (PCB) technology, based on thermic transient effect. The sensor layer is built on 200 μm thick FR4 (Flame Retardant 4) substrate with 35 μm Cu coating, and the other walls of the fluidic chamber are made of Fullcure 720 rapid prototyping (RPT) photopolymer compound. The measurement process is based on a heated, meander-shaped Cu structure and it is controlled automatically by a microcontroller-based digital control unit. The filling volume is calculated from the gradient of the output voltage of the sensor and the applied heating power. A simple measurement system has been built to observe and to verify the preliminary thermic and electrical simulations of the sensor.

Keywords

copper; flow sensors; microfluidics; printed circuits; Cu; FR4 substrate; PCB technology; RPT photopolymer compound; electrical simulations; flame retardant 4 substrate; fullcure rapid prototyping; heating power; liquid volume sensor filling; measurement process; microcontroller-based digital control unit; microfluidic applications; output voltage gradient; printed circuit board; size 200 mum; size 35 mum; thermic transient effect; Copper; Current measurement; Fluids; Heating; Temperature measurement; Voltage measurement; Volume measurement;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electronics Technology (ISSE), 2010 33rd International Spring Seminar on

Conference_Location

Warsaw

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-7849-1

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-7850-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISSE.2010.5547351

Filename

5547351