A New Microfluidic Device Integrated With Quartz Crystal Microbalance to Measure Colloidal Particle Adhesion

Abstract

Polystyrene particles simulating bacteria flow down a micro-channel in the presence of potassium chloride solution. Depending on the ionic concentration or flow rates, portion of the particles are trapped on the glass substrate due to intrinsic surface forces. A novel quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) is built into the microfluidic device to track the real-time particle deposition by shift of the resonance frequency. The new technique is promising to quantify water filtration.