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The anti-reflux ureteral stent was successfully designed and fabricated using a 3D printer. In vitro studies showed that the stent effectively prevented backward flow while minimizing reduction in forward flow.

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been widely used for major definite diagnostic tool, but very limited its place used only indoor such as hospital or diagnosis lab. For the rapid on-site detection of pathogen in an outdoor environment, a low-power cordless polymerase chain reaction (PCR) thermal cycler is crucial module. At this point of view, we proposed a low-power PCR thermal cycler that could be operated in an outdoor anywhere. The disposable PCR chip was made of a polymeric (PI/PET) film to reduce the thermal mass. A dual arrangement of the Pt heaters, which were positioned on the top and bottom of the PCR chip, improved the temperature uniformity. The temperature sensor, which was made of the same material as the heater, utilized the temperature dependence of the Pt resistor to ensure simple fabrication of the temperature sensor. Cooling the PCR chip using dual blower fans enabled thermal cycling to operate with a lower power than that of a Peltier element with a high power consumption. The PCR components were electrically connected to a control module that could be operated with a Li-ion battery (12 V), and the PCR conditions (temperature, time, cycle, etc.) were inputted on a touch screen. For 30 PCR cycles, the accumulated power consumption of heating and cooling was 7.3 Wh, which is easily available from a compact battery. Escherichia coli genomic DNA (510 bp) was amplified using the proposed PCR thermal cycler and the disposable PCR chip. A similar DNA amplification capability was confirmed using the proposed portable and low-power thermal cycler compared with a conventional thermal cycler.

This paper reports an outdoor-use polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology in which stability of resistance temperature detectors (RTDs) is remarkably improved. A thin-film RTD made of non-annealed Pt shows accuracy degradation because the resistance of the RTD tends to decrease during the PCR operation. Thus, the annealing process is applied to the Pt RTD to improve the stability, which is a prerequisite to the accurate measurement of the absolute temperature. Both heaters and the RTD are fabricated on a thin quartz substrate whose melting temperature is high enough for annealing. The performances in the PCR time and power consumption are enhanced by reducing the size of the heater chips with no degradation in the temperature uniformity. A spring-loaded electrode is employed to simplify the procedure of electrical connection to the thermal controller and loading/unloading of the PCR chip. The contact area of the electrical connection is so small that the conductive thermal resistance increases; thereby small heat dissipation can be exploited for low-power operation. The stability of the RTD is experimentally confirmed in terms of resistance variation over repeated PCR operations (four times). The least variation of 0.005%, which corresponds to a negligible temperature variation of 0.038 °C for the PCR, is achieved from the RTD annealed for 5 min at 450 °C. The gel-electrophoresis result indicates that the PCR performance of the proposed system using a film-type PCR chip is comparable to that of a conventional system using a vial tube despite its low power consumption.

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