Analysis of the sensitivity and frequency characteristics of coplanar electrical cell–substrate impedance sensors

A PDMS-glass based micro-device was designed and fabricated with 12 coplanar impedance sensors integrated for electrical cell–substrate impedance sensing (ECIS). The sensitivity and frequency characteristics of the sensors were investigated both theoretically (equivalent circuit model) and experimentally for the commonly used micro-electrode dimension scale (20–80 μm). The experimental results matched well with the theoretical model analysis and revealed that, within this micro-electrode dimension scale, as the electrode width decreased or as the total electrode length decreased the sensitivity of sensor increased over the whole sensing frequency range, whilst electrode to electrode distance had no influence on sensitivity. Through our frequency characteristics analysis, the whole frequency range could be divided into four parts. New functions describing the dominant components in each frequency range were defined and validated experimentally, and could be used to explain the phenomenon of an ECIS sensing frequency window. The contribution to the impedance measurement of cells growing on the edges of the electrodes was determined for the first time. Finally, novel proposals for ECIS sensor design and ECIS measurements were presented.