Design and simulation of flow cell chamber for quartz crystal microbalance sensor array

In this paper, the cause of significant variation in sensing responses of identical QCM sensors array in a circular QCM chamber is analyzed by fluid dynamic simulation. Moreover, the simulation is used to determine an appropriate shape of flow chamber for QCM sensor array. Simulation results show that the flow in a circular-shaped QCM chamber design is primarily turbulent. In addition, the degree of turbulence is increased with flow rate. Thus, sensors at various locations see different sample dispersions causing their sensing behaviors to be significantly different. The QCM chamber has been redesigned to be rectangular line and simulation results indicate that it can be the solution to the problem because flow in the new design is primarily laminar with uniform sample velocity.