PMID- 35957285
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20220815
LR  - 20220815
IS  - 1424-8220 (Electronic)
IS  - 1424-8220 (Linking)
VI  - 22
IP  - 15
DP  - 2022 Jul 31
TI  - Strategies for the Accurate Measurement of the Resonance Frequency in QCM-D 
      Systems via Low-Cost Digital Techniques.
LID - 10.3390/s22155728 [doi]
LID - 5728
AB  - In this paper, an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array)-based digital architecture 
      for the measurement of quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) oscillating frequency of 
      transient responses, i.e., in QCM-D (QCM and Dissipation) applications, is 
      presented. The measurement system is conceived for operations in liquid, with 
      short QCM transient responses due to the large mechanical load. The proposed 
      solution allows for avoiding the complex processing systems typically required by 
      the QCM-D techniques and grants frequency resolutions better than 1 ppm. The core 
      of the architecture is a reciprocal digital frequency meter, combined with the 
      preprocessing of the QCM signal through mixing operations, such as a step-down of 
      the input frequency and reducing the measurement error. The measurement error is 
      further reduced through averaging. Different strategies are proposed to implement 
      the proposed measurement solution, comprising an all-digital circuit and mixed 
      analog/digital ones. The performance of the proposed architectures is 
      theoretically derived, compared, and analyzed by means of experimental data 
      obtained considering 10 MHz QCMs and 200 mus long transient responses. A frequency 
      resolution of about 240 ppb, which corresponds to a Sauerbrey mass resolution of 
      8 ng/cm(2), is obtained for the all-digital solution, whereas for the mixed 
      solution the resolution halves to 120 ppb, with a measurement time of about one 
      second over 100 repetitions.
FAU - Addabbo, Tommaso
AU  - Addabbo T
AD  - Department of Information Engineering and Mathematics, University of Siena, 53100 
      Siena, Italy.
FAU - Fort, Ada
AU  - Fort A
AUID- ORCID: 0000-0003-0916-1516
AD  - Department of Information Engineering and Mathematics, University of Siena, 53100 
      Siena, Italy.
FAU - Landi, Elia
AU  - Landi E
AUID- ORCID: 0000-0003-2797-481X
AD  - Department of Information Engineering and Mathematics, University of Siena, 53100 
      Siena, Italy.
FAU - Moretti, Riccardo
AU  - Moretti R
AUID- ORCID: 0000-0002-1691-3846
AD  - Department of Information Engineering and Mathematics, University of Siena, 53100 
      Siena, Italy.
FAU - Mugnaini, Marco
AU  - Mugnaini M
AD  - Department of Information Engineering and Mathematics, University of Siena, 53100 
      Siena, Italy.
FAU - Vignoli, Valerio
AU  - Vignoli V
AUID- ORCID: 0000-0003-2509-6566
AD  - Department of Information Engineering and Mathematics, University of Siena, 53100 
      Siena, Italy.
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
DEP - 20220731
PL  - Switzerland
TA  - Sensors (Basel)
JT  - Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
JID - 101204366
RN  - 14808-60-7 (Quartz)
SB  - IM
MH  - *Biosensing Techniques/methods
MH  - Quartz/chemistry
MH  - *Quartz Crystal Microbalance Techniques
PMC - PMC9371052
OTO - NOTNLM
OT  - QCM sensors
OT  - QCM-D measurement technique
OT  - digital frequency meter
COIS- The authors declare no conflict of interest.
EDAT- 2022/08/13 06:00
MHDA- 2022/08/16 06:00
PMCR- 2022/07/31
CRDT- 2022/08/12 01:22
PHST- 2022/06/27 00:00 [received]
PHST- 2022/07/27 00:00 [revised]
PHST- 2022/07/28 00:00 [accepted]
PHST- 2022/08/12 01:22 [entrez]
PHST- 2022/08/13 06:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2022/08/16 06:00 [medline]
PHST- 2022/07/31 00:00 [pmc-release]
AID - s22155728 [pii]
AID - sensors-22-05728 [pii]
AID - 10.3390/s22155728 [doi]
PST - epublish
SO  - Sensors (Basel). 2022 Jul 31;22(15):5728. doi: 10.3390/s22155728.