Optical sensing of flowing microparticles in a microfluidic chip

• Main Author: Krishanthini d/o Vejayan
• Other Authors: Jiang Xudong
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/167800
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Detection of microparticles is a routine task in many domains, e.g. cell biology, medical, environmental research etc [1]. Over the years, there have been several methods to detect and enumerate bacteria in water. In particular, the optical detection approach is often utilized for pathogen monitoring systems as it is highly sensitive. This approach has been constantly evolving and its application has increased over time. The fluorescence detection method is one of the most sensitive methods for microparticle detection. Fluorescence detection is a detection technique that makes use of the fluorescence released when a substance transitions from the ground state to the excited state and returns to the ground state. However, the method requires the use of bulky equipment, large sample size for analysis and is costly. In this project, we incorporate flow cytometry method layouts and propose a device, modifying the existing experiment setup for fluorescence-based detection method of microparticles. We address to miniaturize and detect low concentration of microparticles flowing in a microfluidic chip and optimize the optical system by choosing appropriate components. With the optimized system, different sizes of microfluidic chips are used to collect detection results and are compared.