Miniaturized Electrically Actuated Microfluidic System for Biosensor Applications

Abstract

The miniaturization of microfluidic systems able to manage small sample volumes is one of the key factors for the sensor applications. In this paper, we describe a miniaturized Lab-on-Chip (LoC) system able to electro-loading small volumes of genetic sample (200 nl) via ElectroWetting on Dielectric (EWoD) actuation and detect DNA via polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The core of the system is a miniaturized silicon-based chip that electrically delivers a total volume of 20 μl of liquid into 96 miniaturized chambers of 200 nl each. The chambers are chemically treated with a proper surface process to achieve both a suitable wettability for electrokinetics liquid loading and surface biocompatibility for PCR process. The chip contains integrated temperature sensors and heaters for driving the PCR thermal process. The system here described is proved to be able to electro-loading small volumes of sample (about 200 nl) and perform PCR amplification in multiple microchambers (up to 96), being a very appealing potential solution for genetic point-of-care applications.

PCR Technologies for Point of Care Testing: Progress and Perspectives

“…Therefore, while there is extensive literature reporting systems and miniaturized devices for PCR chip and some others on sample prep devices, ,− there are only a limited number of studies where the whole process for NA analysis is a fully integrated solution in a PoC perspective.…”

EWOD silicon biosensor for multiple nucleic acids analysis

“…The development of miniaturized microfluidic systems for multiple analysis involving small sample volume is very attractive for a broad range of biosensor applications, including the detection of nucleic acids (Battaglia, Petralia, Vicario, Cirillo, & Conoci, ; Mark, Haeberle, Roth, von Stettenz, & Zengerlez, ; Petralia, Castagna, Motta, & Conoci, ), proteins (He & Herr, ; Petralia, Ventimiglia, Ceschia, Gasparin, & Verardo, ), and environmental analyses (Casilli et al, ; Giancane, Borovkov, Inoue, Conoci, & Valli, ; Italiano et al, ; Rella et al, ; C. Zhao, Ge, & Yang, ). Among these applications, in the last decades great attention has been received by the detection of nucleic acids in miniaturized biochip (Lab‐on‐Chip [LoC]) devices (Callari, Petralia, Conoci, & Sortino, ; Liu et al, ; Petralia, Sciuto, & Conoci, ; Sortino, Petralia, Condorelli, Conoci, & Condorelli, ).…”