Microfluidic differential resistive pulse sensors.

This study demonstrates an on-chip resistive pulse-sensing scheme with a design of symmetric mirror channels, which significantly reduces the noise and achieves better signal-to-noise ratio. Polystyrene particles of different sizes have been detected with the developed sensing scheme and a record low volume ratio of the particle to the sensing channel, or 0.0004%, has been detected with particles of 520 nm in diameter in a sensing aperture of 50x16x20 microm3. This volume ratio is about ten times lower than the lowest volume ratio reported in the literature including that specified for commercial Coulter counters.