Refractometric monitoring of dissolution and fluid flow with distributed feedback dye laser sensor.

Christoph Vannahme,Martin Dufva,Carsten Gade,Kristian Tølbøl Sørensen,Anders Kristensen

doi:10.1364/oe.23.006562

Abstract

Monitoring the dissolution of solid material in liquids and monitoring of fluid flow is of significant interest for applications in chemistry, food production, medicine, and especially in the fields of microfluidics and lab on a chip. Here, real-time refractometric monitoring of dissolution and fast fluid flow with DFB dye laser sensors with an optical imaging spectroscopy setup is presented. The dye laser sensors provide both low detection limits and high spatial resolution. It is demonstrated how the materials NaCl, sucrose, and bovine serum albumin show characteristic dissolution patterns. The unique feature of the presented method is a high frame rate of up to 20 Hz, which is proven to enable the monitoring of fast flow of a sucrose solution jet into pure water.

Highlights

Dissolution of solid material in liquids, fluid flow, and mixing are important for processes in chemistry, food production, and medicine, especially for drug delivery
Monitoring the dissolution of solid material in liquids and monitoring of fluid flow is of significant interest for applications in chemistry, food production, medicine, and especially in the fields of microfluidics and lab on a chip
The unique feature of the presented method is a high frame rate of up to 20 Hz, which is proven to enable the monitoring of fast flow of a sucrose solution jet into pure water

Summary

Introduction

Dissolution of solid material in liquids, fluid flow, and mixing are important for processes in chemistry, food production, and medicine, especially for drug delivery. For studying dissolution and fluid dynamics, low detection limits and high frame rates are required For this purpose, dye-based distributed feedback (DFB) laser sensors are most suitable as optical signal transducers as they exhibit very low detection limits [24,25,26,27] and can be operated with very high repetition rates of up to 5 MHz [28]. Real-time dissolution monitoring of solid pieces of NaCl, sucrose, and BSA in water is presented utilizing DFB dye laser sensors in an optical imaging spectroscopy setup. It is demonstrated how these different materials show characteristic dissolution patterns. A high frame rate of 20 Hz is proven to enable the monitoring of fast flow of a sucrose solution jet into pure water

DFB dye laser sensors and imaging spectroscopy setup

Experiments

Dissolution monitoring

Fluid flow monitoring

Conclusion