High-Frequency Electrodeless Quartz Crystal Microbalance Chip with a Bare Quartz Resonator Encapsulated in a Silicon Microchannel

Abstract

We present a high-frequency electrodeless quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) chip with a bare quartz resonator encapsulated in a silicon microchannel, which is fabricated by micromachining technology. This QCM chip packages an AT-cut quartz plate 2.5 mm long, 1.7 mm wide, and 9.6 µm thick, which is supported by micropillars without fixed parts. There is no issue about destruction during assembly because handling the fragile quartz resonator becomes unnecessary. The quartz resonator is electrodeless and not fixed; therefore, there are no losses due to electrodes and contacting wires. As a result, a high quality factor (Q-factor) and a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be obtained. The Q-factor is about 800–2800 at 170 MHz in the flow of the carrier solution. In addition, it is possible to reuse the device, because the quartz surfaces can adsorb receptor proteins nonspecifically, which can be removed by a washing procedure with a strong acid solution flowed in the microchannel. The high-frequency quartz resonator (170 MHz) encapsulated in the microchannel can reduce the influence of the viscosity contribution to the frequency shift, achieving highly sensitive and quantitative analysis. The QCM chip is excited and detects the shear vibrations of the quartz resonator by the line antennas without contact. Consequently, both sides of the quartz resonator can be used as the detection area in a solution. We succeeded in detecting the human immunoglobulin G (hIgG) at a concentration of 6 µg/ml via the staphylococcal protein A (SPA) immobilized nonspecifically on the developed QCM chip in real time without any labeling.