Mingxian Huang

A benchmark study with sealchip planar patch-clamp technology.

Although conventional patch-clamp methods provide high information content, they are labor-intensive and suffer from low throughput and high overall cost. Several approaches for achieving high throughput electrophysiology are under development, among which microchip-based patch-clamp systems uniquely achieve a higher degree of miniaturization, faster perfusion and mixing, and lower reagent cost without losing information content. The goal of this study was to establish a benchmark for our biochip technology with 52 chips tested sequentially. We demonstrate that our microfabrication and processing technology is sufficiently mature to produce a consistent hole size. We further demonstrate high-quality planar whole-cell patch clamping with >75% overall success rate at achieving gigaohm seals, followed by stable whole-cell access lasting at least 15 min with access resistance (Ra) below 15 MOmega and membrane resistance (Rm) above 200 MOmega. These biochips are ideally suited for high throughput compound screening for ion channel targets.

Functional Biochips for Cell and Molecular Manipulation

We report here the application of electromagnetic and dielectrophoresis biochips for processing cell and molecular samples.

Dielectrophoretic Separation and Transportation of Cells and Bioparticles on Microfabriacted Chips

Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is the motion of polarized particles in response to nonuniform AC electric fields. This paper describes the application of DEP for separating and transporting cells and bioparticles on microfabricated electrode arrays.