Microfluidic Half-Mode Substrate Integrated Waveguide Sensor Development for Non-Destructive Real-time Qualitative and Quantitative Evaluation of Liquid Foods and Beverages

Authors: Swapnil Shekhar

Book: Transforming Food Analysis and Control: Non-Destructive Technologies and Innovations

Editors: K. Prasad, S. Shekhar, M. K. Paswan, and R. Ahuja

Publisher: SLIET Longowal

Publication year: 2026

Publication date: 2026-07-20

ISBN: 978-81-990304-1-1 (e-book); 978-81-990304-0-4 (hardback)

Chapter pages: 117–148

DOI: To be added after DOI registration.

Abstract

Quality evaluation involves the systematic assessment of product characteristics and is essential to ensuring compliance with predefined standards in meeting consumer expectations. The traditional approach to destructive quality evaluation destroys the sample and is thus unsuitable for future use. In contrast, non destructive quality evaluation assesses attributes without compromising the sample’s integrity, enabling real-time monitoring. Beverages are liquid consumables and may be alcoholic or non-alcoholic in nature. Determining the specific constituents of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages is of utmost importance for quality control, regulatory compliance, consumer safety, and consistency, all achieved through a low cost approach to characterisation. Substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) based sensors are precise and compact, with low loss and suitable for both contact and non contact detection. SIW-based sensors offer a cost-effective and easily integrable solution for real-time quality evaluation. A novel half-mode SIW sensor, based on the material-perturbation cavity resonator approach, was designed for real-time assessment of its applicability in characterising liquid foods. Selection covers the range of most commercially available concentrations of water-soluble beverage components. The measured results show a significant shift in the resonant frequency, enabling quantitative estimation of the loaded sample under test. The findings suggest that the developed sensor can be successfully applied as a precision sensor in a real time system.

Keywords: Cavity resonator; non-destructive evaluation; substrate-integrated waveguide; sensor; beverage; characterisation

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