The relative permittivity or the interaction of the electric field with a substance is a measure that can be used in many applications. For instance, in biomedical applications the contrast in relative permittivity of biological substances is used in microwave spectroscopy to identify tumours and intracerebral haemorrhage. Especially at higher frequencies (> 5 GHz) biomedical substances has interesting responses. In recent research, there has been identified a correlation between the relative permittivity of the blood and the blood glucose level. In order to provide new solutions for through the skin blood glucose level monitoring, that can be integrated in smart devices, miniaturized permittivity sensors are required.
In this/these master project you will explore implementation of ring-resonators for measurement of relative permittivity of biomedical substances in microelectronics technology. Use of ring-resonators, which are rings where the length correspond to the number of wavelengths is giving resonance response, can be utilized to characterize the relative permittivity of a medium. As the corresponding number of waves in the ring is given by the permittivity of the surrounding media this response can be characterized and correlated to the permittivity of the media under test.
In this master project you will:
- Design an on-chip ring resonator structure appropriate for biomedical substances using electromagnetics simulations tools (CST).
- Integrate the resonator in an oscillator circuit
- Tape out the design and characterize the sensor