New broadband and contact less RF / microfluidic sensor dedicated to bioengineering

This paper presents an innovative RF based biosensor, which allies both RF/microwave detection and a microfluidic network for quick and precise biological analysis. It is composed of a coplanar waveguide with a microfluidic channel placed on top. Thanks to an appropriate de-embedding technique and modeling of the measurements, the relative effective permittivity of HUVEC human cells has been evaluated successfully. Furthermore, the sensor has been experimented for various cells concentrations in suspension, which validates its use for bioengineering and especially cells quantification and counting in solution, without any direct contact or use of labels on the cells, in the contrary to other usual biosensors types (optical, mechanical or DC/low frequency detection based ones).