We present an approach for identification and concentration determination of liquids of pico to nanoliter volumes at a frequency of 35 GHz based on a whispering-gallery mode (WGM) dielectric resonator technique. A quasioptical coupling scheme based on dielectric image waveguides was employed to excite high-Q running wave WGMs with uniform azimuthal field distribution in cylindrical sapphire disks with quality factors up to 4×105 at room temperature. Measurement of the liquid induced changes in the resonator quality factor and resonance frequency has been performed for droplets down to 90 pl volume spotted at different positions on the surface of the sapphire disk. We have employed our method for concentration determination of ethanol, glucose, and albumin dissolved in water. Solutions with concentration values well below 10% could be clearly separated from pure water. Our method is promising for the characterization of biological liquids.

A microwave resonator composed of a sapphire cylinder and a quartz plate with a 400 nl cavity was developed for the determination of the complex permittivity of liquids at 10 GHz. This sensor was calibrated over a wide range of values for real and imaginary parts of permittivity. The measured resonator losses induced by the liquid were found to be proportional to the dipole relaxation time of the liquid molecules, as predicted by perturbation theory. Our analysis of weight concentration and temperature dependence of the measured inverse quality factor revealed a sensitivity of about 0.1% for aqueous solutions of glucose.

Electromagnetic properties of novel quasi-optical resonators are studied theoretically and experimentally. The resonators are a radially two-layered dielectric disc sandwiched between conducting endplates. The internal layer can be filled with air or lossy liquid. Whispering gallery modes are excited in such a resonator and the mode energy is concentrated near the inner side of the cylindrical surface of an external layer. The measurement data obtained in the K a-band are compared with theoretical calculations of eigenfrequencies and quality factors of the Teflon resonator filled with water, ethyl alcohol, benzene and aqueous solutions of ethyl alcohol. A number of 'anomalous' properties of the resonator can be described using Maxwell equations. The experimental data on the complex permittivity of a binary mixture water-ethyl alcohol are compared with the values calculated in terms of Debye's function. An important feature of the proposed technique is that it holds promise for making first principle microwave measurements of the permittivity of lossy liquids.

No abstract

No abstract