MEMS fluid viscosity sensor

Quartz shear resonators are employed widely as sensors to measure Newtonian viscosities of liquids. Perturbation of the electrical equivalent circuit parameters of the plate resonator by the fluid loading permits calculation of the mass density-shear viscosity product. Use of doubly rotated resonators does permit additional information to be obtained, but in no case can the viscosity and mass density values be separated. In these measurements, the resonator surface is exposed to a measurand bath whose extent greatly exceeds the penetration depth of the evanescent shear mode excited by the active element. Here we briefly review past techniques and current art, and sketch a proposal involving the interesting situation in which the separation between the resonator and a confining wall is less than the penetration depth of the fluid occupying the intervening region. To highlight the salient features of this novel case, the discussion is limited to the very idealized circumstance of a strictly 1-D problem, unencumbered by the vicissitudes inevitably encountered in practice. An appendix mentions some of these functional impedimenta and indicates how deviations from ideality might be approached in engineering embodiments. When the fluid confinement is of the order of the penetration depth, the resonator perturbation becomes a sensitive function of the separation, and it is found that viscosity and density may be separately and uniquely determined. Moreover, extreme miniaturization is a natural consequence because the penetration depth generally is on the order of micrometers for frequencies around 1 MHz at temperatures and pressures ordinarily encountered with gases and liquids. Micro-electro-mechanical (MEMS) versions of viscometers and associated types of fluid sensors are thereby enabled.