Miniaturized laboratory-on-chip systems promise rapid, sensitive, and multiplexed detection of biological samples for medical diagnostics, drug discovery, and high-throughput screening. Using micro-fabrication techniques and incorporating a unique design of transistor-based heating, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are further advancing the use of silicon transistor and electronics into chemistry and biology for point-of-care diagnostics.
Lab-on-a-chip technologies are attractive as they require fewer reagents, have lower detection limits, allow for parallel analyses, and can have a smaller footprint.
"Integration of various laboratory functions onto microchips has been intensely studied for many years," explained Rashid Bashir, an Abel Bliss Professor of electrical and computer engineering and of bioengineering at Illinois. "Further advances of these technologies require the ability to integrate additional elements, such as the miniaturized heating element, and the ability to integrate heating elements in a massively parallel format compatible with silicon technology.
"In this work, we demonstrated that we can heat nanoliter volume droplets, individually and in an array, using VLSI silicon based devices, up to temperatures that make it interesting to do various biochemical reactions within these droplets."
"Our method positions droplets on an array of individual silicon microwave heaters on chip to precisely control the temperature of droplets-in-air, allowing us to perform biochemical reactions, including DNA melting and detection of single base mismatches," said Eric Salm, first author of the paper, "Ultralocalized thermal reactions in subnanoliter droplets-in-air," published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on February 12.
According to Salm, approaches to perform localized heating of these individual subnanoliter droplets can allow for new ap
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| Contact: Rashid Bashir rbashir@illinois.edu 217-333-3097 University of Illinois College of Engineering Source:Eurekalert |