Simultaneous particle counting and detecting on a chip

This paper reports a lab-on-a-chip device that performs particle detection and number counting by coupling the fluorescent detection and particle counting simultaneously. The particle number counting is realized by a resistive pulse sensor (RPS) and fluorescent particle detection is achieved by a miniaturized laser-fiber optic detection system. By using a single microfluidic channel with two detecting arm channels placed at the two ends of the sensing section, the RPS signal-to-noise ratio is improved significantly. Two-stage differential amplification is used to further increase the signal-to-noise ratio for both the RPS and fluorescent signals. This method is also highly sensitive, so that we were able to realize the RPS and fluorescent detection of 0.9 microm (mean diameter) fluorescent particles. Excellent agreement was achieved by comparing the results obtained by our system with the results from a commercial flow cytometer for a variety of samples of mixed fluorescent and non-fluorescent particles. The method described in this paper is simple and can be applied to develop a compact device without the need of lock-in amplifier or similar bulky supplemental equipment.