Effects of Obstacles on QCM Biosensor Efficiency: A Parametric Study

Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) biosensors are often used for the rapid detection of pathogens, for example, in drinking water.The pathogens are caught by antibodies attached to the crystal surface, leading to an increase in the attached mass and a subsequent change in the crystal resonant frequency.However, in the standard geometry configuration, most pathogens are caught in areas with limited crystal sensitivity.In our previous study, we numerically investigated the effect of geometry changes on pathogen detection efficiency.In particular, obstacles were added on the top non-detecting wall of the biosensor cell to channel the flow with pathogens.In this work, we follow up on the achieved results and conduct a parametric study focusing on tuning the previously found best obstacle layouts.With the tuned parameters, a further increase in the detection efficiency was observed.