Huinan Yu

Development of Plastic Microfluidic Devices for Sample Preparation

Microfluidics technology shows excellent potential for applications in biotechnology, chemical sensing, and drug delivery. The use of microfluidics results in cycle time reduction, reagent cost and labor intensity savings due to the benefits of miniaturization, and functional integration. As a result, miniature DNA sample preparation and analytical devices may potentially become part of a point-of-care systems for rapid medical diagnoses. Similar diagnostic devices will benefit veterinary and food safety applications. In this paper, we discuss design, fabrication, and testing of plastic microfluidic devices for on-chip genetic sample preparation. These fabrication methods are being used to produce components of a complete genetic sample preparation micro-system. The detailed discussion on the development of micro-PCR (polymerase chain reaction) devices and bio-channel hybridization arrays is given. We also describe a path to further individual component integration.

A Miniaturized and Integrated Plastic Thermal Chemical Reactor for Genetic Analysis

A miniaturized monolithically integrated plastic thermal reactor has been realized using plastic casting method. The thermal reactor device consists of a reaction chamber, a resistive heater, a thermal electric device and a thermocouple. The temperature in the reaction chamber is controlled through a PC programmable processor. The typical heating, and cooling rates were 2.4°C/s and 2°C/s respectively. The thermal characteristic of the device was also studied through modeling. On-chip lysis of Escherichia coli cells and subsequent amplification of the released genomic DNA segments were demonstrated.

Integrated Microfluidic DNA Array Biochips

Two microfluidic DNA array devices that integrate massively parallel microfluidic channels with conventional DNA microarray technology have been developed. These devices allow DNA hybridization assays to be performed in a miniaturized and highly parallel fashion. The microfluidic arrays are a new DNA diagnostics platform that has several desirable features such as single-use and cost-effective, highly parallel (up to 52 protocols in parallel), and processed rapidly. Additionally, only nanoliter-volumes (∼100 nL) of DNA sample/reagents are consumed per array.