Development of High Frequency Microfluidic Biosensors for Intracellular Analysis

This paper deals with the development and characterization of a high frequency (HF) label-free microfluidic biosensor for the non-invasive analysis in liquid of cell intracellular properties. Thanks to the measurement of intrinsic cell dielectric properties, information on their type, pathological state or either differentiation status can be deduced. This method permits to envision promising early diagnosis tools. The presented microfluidic biosensor is based on a capacitively coupled resonators architecture made with thick gold electrodes designed to ensure a high sensitivity to cells flowing in a microfluidic channel. To prove the concept and access the detection capabilities of such sensors, HF measurements have been performed on polystyrene beads and results have been compared to full-wave electromagnetic simulations. The results demonstrate the potential of the developed method to characterize cell dielectric properties in a microfluidic environment.