Bioactive particles, such as bacteria, DNA, and protein, represent an important class of environmental threat to public health. Rapid detection and differentiation of bioparticles is of utmost importance. While detection of bioactive particles are currently provided by research laboratories equipped with expensive and bulky set-ups, it is important to develop new analytical devices that are portable, smart, inexpensive and suitable for mass production. In this study, we developed a micromachined Coulter counter with multiple sensing microchannels for quantitative measurement of pollen and polymethacrylate particles [1]. The proposed design has multiple channels operating in parallel, but integrated with just one sample reservoir and one power source. Our device is capable of differentiating and counting micro polymethacrylate particles and Juniper pollen rapidly. Moreover, the device throughput is much better than the single channel Coulter counter.

1. Zhe, J., Jagtiani, A., Dutta, P., Hu, J., and Carletta, J., 2007, “A Micromachined High Throughput Coulter Counter for Bioparticle Detection and Counting,” Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, Vol. 17, pp. 304-313.