Monitoring of biofilm growth with thickness-shear mode quartz resonators in different flow and nutrition conditions

Monitoring of microbial biofilm growth with 10 MHz thickness-shear mode (TS M) resonators in aqueous systems with different fluid flow speed and nutrit ion environments was studied. Biofilm grew even on a polished gold surface of the resonator. Admittance magnitude of the resonator was found to be a r obust electrical quantity to monitor, since the pressure shocks generated b y the fluid pumps seem to add considerable noise only to resonance frequenc y. Microbial biofilm growth has not been earlier reported as a function of admittance magnitude of a TSM resonator. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.