A Pattern-Control Digital Microfluidic Bio-Chip for Fast Thermal Cycle in Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests

A pattern-control digital biochip is proposed for fast medical tests. With integrated circuit modules in each basic element, also known as micro-electrode, this biochip can achieve digital microfluidic operations, capacitive sensing, and thermal cycle via different control patterns. As a result, bioprotocols can be derived from target biomedical tests to reach better test accuracy on the proposed chip. For the mentioned fast medical tests, samples/reagents can be identified first by capacitive sensing, followed by microfluidic and thermal cycle operations. Preliminary measurements show that heating/cooling rate of 5 degrees C/sec can be achieved and demonstrate each thermal cycle (95.55.72) for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) can be completed in less than 20 seconds with power consumption of 256-444 uW per micro-electrode while dealing with nano-liter samples. This implies both test time and power consumption per sample test can be further improved, making our proposed biochip very suitable for point-of-care test (POCT) applications.

Automated summary

A pattern-control digital biochip is proposed for fast medical tests, which can achieve digital microfluidic operations, capacitive sensing, and thermal cycle via different control patterns. Preliminary measurements show that each thermal cycle for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) can be completed in less than 20 seconds with power consumption of 256-444 uW per micro-electrode while dealing with nano-liter samples.