Love mode surface acoustic wave and impedance sensors for water toxicity sensing

Abstract

Clean water supply systems and infrastructure require periodic testing of water samples to maintain water quality. To enable this, toxicity tests need to be rapid, accurate, portable, and low cost to provide affordable water security especially in developing countries. Qualitative and quantitative measurement of contaminants in water is classically done by standard analytic chemical methods, which are timeconsuming, labor-intensive, expensive, and cannot be performed easily outside the laboratory. An alternative to these methods is cell-based sensors, which can detect the presence of a wide range of toxicants by monitoring the cell states. Although electric cell-substrate impedance sensing (ECIS) has been demonstrated to be an effective method for water toxicity sensing, the use of ECIS only is not sensitive enough to detect many toxicants at low concentrations. Merging a sensor platform with multiparametric measurement capabilities could increase the security of detection. Love mode surface acoustic wave (SAW) device is considered as one of the powerful candidates for cell-based toxicity biosensors. In this study, a hybrid Love mode SAW/ECIS sensor was developed. Theoretical analysis and experiments were performed to demonstrate the capability of two sensing techniques (i.e., SAW and ECIS) for toxicity sensing.

Love Wave Sensor with High Penetration Depth for Potential Application in Cell Monitoring

“…After one hour, the response showed a decrease in the rate of increment of insertion losses. This insertion loss behavior is similar to what has been reported when seeding cells in high frequency Love wave sensors [ 3 , 13 , 35 ]. This response is due to the sensor surface becoming covered by the cells adhering to the sensor surface.…”

Shear-horizontal surface acoustic wave sensor for non-invasive monitoring of dynamic cell spreading and attachment in wound healing assays

“…Employing this technology, different studies have been performed: protein adsorption and interaction, lipid research or polymer analysis 22 . SH-sensors have been successfully employed in the last ten years especially in the field of cell sedimentation, adhesion and spreading 23,24 , cellsubstrate interaction 25 or as a cell-based biosensor for toxin detection 26 . Furthermore, first investigations were performed detecting the cellular damage due to hydrogen peroxide treatment 27 .…”

Development of a Love-Wave Biosensor Based on an Analytical Model

“…According to the works of Wu et al [26] and Furnis et al [27], a cell monolayer cytoskeleton presented changes of viscosity in the range of 1 cP to 4 cP in experiments of adherent cells. The L-SAW biosensor is characterized with different aqueous glycerol solutions corresponding to (0-40% vol) of glycerol in water.…”