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Specificity-Normalized Enrichment Kinetics in Focused Traveling Surface Acoustic Wave IgG Biosensing: Concentration-Regime Design Rules and Power-Window Analysis

Adnan Asghar1, Noah Oliver1
1University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Abstract

FTSAW immunoassays accelerate the process of measuring immune reactions by actively squeezing target-containing microbeads to the interrogation region. In this paper, we develop a normalized enrichment kinetics analysis for human IgG by simultaneously considering several key metrics: RF power response, blank retention, 60-s captures count, time required for detection, signal to blank ratio, concentration-dependent scaling, and chemistry-selection dimensionless indices. To construct our mathematical design parameters, all FTSAW data presented in this paper was numerically transformed into a minimal set of quantities. From our analysis, it appears that the sandwich configuration lowered the 60-s blank count from 27 to 4 microbeads, increased the signal to blank ratio from 3.07-18.96 to 5.00-90.75 depending on the concentration range, and sped up the detection time 82.9% at 100 ng/mL and 48.9% at 10 ng/mL in comparison with the direct antibody-antigen capture. The latter configuration had greater blank-corrected counts for all concentrations considered. Our analysis reveals three distinct crossovers: timing crossover near 0.55 ng/mL, early utility crossover near 5.6 ng/mL based on neighboring measurements, and selectivity-weighted throughput crossover near 0.65 ng/mL taking into account blank suppression explicitly. The RF power response analysis indicated a dominant acoustic gain between 0.1 and 1 mW, followed by diminishing returns at high powers. Thus, this work answers the design problem by providing concentration-dependent optimal FTSAW assays choices: sandwich assays for fast low-background detection at moderate-high concentrations, and direct capture configuration close to the lowest considered concentration due to higher event counts.

Keywords: acoustofluidics; biosensing; IgG detection; surface acoustic waves; microfluidics; enrichment kinetics; specificity; assay design
Citation
Adnan Asghar, Noah Oliver. Specificity-Normalized Enrichment Kinetics in Focused Traveling Surface Acoustic Wave IgG Biosensing: Concentration-Regime Design Rules and Power-Window Analysis[J], TK Techforum Journal (ThyssenKrupp Techforum), Volume 2024 (3). 42-55.

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Joseph Bentsman1
1Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
S. Sheyko1, O. Hrechanyi1, T. Vasilchenko1, A. Hrechana2
1Department of Metallurgical Equipment, Zaporizhzhia National University, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine
2Scientific Laboratory of the Latest Technologies, Educational and Scientific Production Center “Metalspetsproekt,” Zaporizhzhia National University, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine