抄録
This paper highlights the natural frequency of droplets used for portable biosensors. The functionalities of membrane proteins are of interest for biosensor applications. We have been developing devices integrating membrane proteins on artificial bilayer lipid membranes (BLMs), where water-in-oil droplets play key roles for reproducible BLM formation. For portable uses, however, BLM rupture would become a severe problem. Previous works found that there seemed to be two cases of BLM rupture in the devices. One is due to the natural frequency of BLM. The other case is the external force from aqueous droplets contacting to BLM; the sloshing of the droplets would destroy the BLM. Here, we examined the sloshing of droplets at different dimensions to reveal the factors deeply related to the natural frequency. The results indicated that the natural frequency basically followed the conventional theory, while surface tension and viscosity may be alternative factors.
