Reflective thermal lens detection device

A reflective thermal lens detection device was developed for realizing a portable and sensitive detector for a microsystem. An aluminum mirror was formed on the main plate of a microchip, and a reflected probe beam was detected with a single pick-up unit. The background signal due to light absorption of the aluminum mirror was 60 times reduced when the microchannel and the mirror were separated with an interval of 600 microm. The tilt angle of the microchip significantly affected the precision of the measurement. Then a quadrant photodiode was used to detect the center of gravity of the reflected probe beam to regulate the tilt angle within +/-0.05 degrees , and this value was enough to achieve 1% CV (coefficient of variance) precision in the measurements. The limit of detection (LOD) was 60 nM for xylene cyanol solution, and the absorbance was 9.4 x 10(-6) AU. About 40 times higher sensitivity was obtained in comparison with a spectrophotometer.