A microfluidic surface acoustic wave sensor platform: Application to high viscosity measurements

Acoustic Love wave oscillators offer a great potentiality to integrated viscosity measurements thanks to a high sensitivity and the lack of moving parts. The main limitation is insertion losses that increase with viscosity. To overcome this limitation, this paper reports the use of microfluidic techniques with a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) chip bonded on the Love wave device. Liquid flows of aqueous glycerol solutions up to 0.939 Pa s (939cP, 98% glycerol) have been tested in oscillator mode. These results are promising for the viscoelastic study of viscous liquids. Modelisation using the classical perturbation theory is discussed.