Application of segmented flow for quality control of food using microfluidic tools

The integration of segmented flow into the development of a new rapid detection method for food-borne pathogens is presented. The workflow is subdivided into different steps. The selective part is to catch contaminants from the food matrix. Afterward, the fluorescently labeled target cells converted from the cell suspension into droplets (nl-scale). For this, microfluidic tools like glass or polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chips are necessary. It is the main step to determine the amount of contaminants (target cells) fluorescently inside one droplet. Therefore the number of target cells was detected by means of a microscope or by generating one droplet with one fluorescent target cell spectroscopically based on a yes- or no-decision. For a competitive platform, PDMS as a cost-effective chip-module was integrated into an automatic microscopic detection system. For quality control during routine analysis a commercial spectroscopic detection system was used to measure the fluorescence signal. Based on these efforts a prototype design for spectroscopic detection was developed. (C) 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim