A disposable optofluidic micro-transmission cell with tailorable length for Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy of biological fluids

Mid-infrared Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy of liquid biological samples is limited by the high absorption of water in this spectral range, which makes conventional transmission cuvettes unsuitable as their centimeter-scale length is already too big. The most common alternative relies on the use of attenuated total reflection (ATR) accessories, which provide a small interaction path length for light along the interface between the analyte and the expensive ATR crystals. In this work, we address this issue by proposing a disposable and low-cost micro-transmission cell. Its construction relies on a simple technique, which consists of dispersing plastic spherical microparticles in a liquid sample before dispensing it between two pieces of silicon assembled one onto the other and acting as windows for the cell. Consequently, the microparticles act as a spacer of very precise height in-between the two silicon windows. This technique allows easy construction of infrared absorption cells with near-optimum optical interaction path length just by selecting the most appropriate particle size. The concept is demonstrated by measuring the concentration of glucose in aqueous solutions using microspheres of diameter 20 mu m then 40 mu m and analyzing the corresponding glucose absorption peaks in the wavenumber range 950-1200 cm-1. The performance is compared to that of standard ATR spectroscopy of the same samples. This resulted in a root-mean-square error of cross-validation (RMSECV) of 58.8 mg dl-1 as obtained for transmission measurements by partial least squares (PLS) regression, which is comparable to the RMSECV of 53 mg dl-1 for single-reflection diamond ATR measurements. A disposable micro-transmission liquid cell is constructed by assembling two silicon pieces and adding to the analyte monodisperse microscale particles acting as a spacer. It can tailor the optical path length, allowing optimum analyte measurement.