Design, Fabrication and Performance Analysis of a Portable, Antenna Analyzer Based, Quartz Crystal Microbalance Measuring System with Energy Dissipation

Abstract

Impedance measurements play a critical role in analyzing the electrical behavior of piezoelectric biosensors in general. Antenna analyzers are engineered to measure the specific case of input impedance for antenna systems. In this study small form factor antenna analyzer is repurposed to work as driving circuit for a Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) biosensor in combination with a single board computer as an indication of how small and portable an impedance measuring system can be made, while allowing monitoring of important parameters of series and parallel resonance frequencies together with dissipation factor. A QCM crystal with a 10 MHz fundamental resonance frequency is employed to determine the limit of detection of the system in Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) and glycerol solutions. Dissipation factor and phase angle were monitored during the experiments. Limit of detection is 20 µg/ml BSA in phosphate buffer saline (PBS) and 250 µl of glycerol in 100 ml of deionized water.