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Updated: Feb 2, 2026

Terahertz Microfluidic Sensing Using a Parallel-plate Waveguide Sensor
Published on: August 30, 2012
Quasi-Optical Terahertz Microfluidic Devices for Chemical Sensing and Imaging
Lei Liu1, Zhenguo Jiang2, Syed Rahman3
1Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, 275 Fitzpatrick, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA. lliu3@nd.edu.
Abstract:
We first review the development of a frequency domain quasi-optical terahertz (THz) chemical sensing and imaging platform consisting of a quartz-based microfluidic subsystem in our previous work. We then report the application of this platform to sensing and characterizing of several selected liquid chemical samples from 570⁻630 GHz. THz sensing of chemical mixtures including isopropylalcohol-water (IPA-H₂O) mixtures and acetonitrile-water (ACN-H₂O) mixtures have been successfully demonstrated and the results have shown completely different hydrogen bond dynamics detected in different mixture systems. In addition, the developed platform has been applied to study molecule diffusion at the interface between adjacent liquids in the multi-stream laminar flow inside the microfluidic subsystem. The reported THz microfluidic platform promises real-time and label-free chemical/biological sensing and imaging with extremely broad bandwidth, high spectral resolution, and high spatial resolution.
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