Publication Title: A fast method for monitoring the shifts in resonance frequency and dissipation of the QCM sensors of a Monolithic array in biosensing applications

Journal:  IEEE Sensors Journal, 2020

Communication Type: Scientific Publication

By:   Román Fernández, María Calero, José Vicente García, Ilya Reviakine, Antonio Arnau, and Yolanda Jiménez

AWSensors, Spain

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2020.3042653

Abstract:

Improvement of data acquisition rate remains as an important challenge in applications with Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) technology where high throughput is required. To address this challenge, we developed a fast method capable of measuring the response of a large number of sensors and/or overtones, with a high time resolution. Our method, which can be implemented in a low-cost readout electronic circuit, is based on the estimation of Δfr (frequency shift) and ΔD (dissipation shift) from measurements of the sensor response obtained at a single driving frequency. By replacing slow fitting procedures with a direct calculation, the time resolution is only limited by the physical characteristics of the sensor (resonance frequency and quality factor), but not by the method itself. Capabilities of the method are demonstrated by monitoring multiple overtones with a single 5 MHz sensor and a Monolithic QCM array comprising 24 50MHz-sensors. Accuracy of the method is validated and compared with the state-of-the-art, as well as with a reference method based on impedance analysis.