Continuous flow PCR (polymerase chain reaction) chip holds impressive advantages compared to micro chamber PCR chip. In order to have better understanding of kinetic characteristics of continuous flow PCR chip, a comprehensive mathematical model is presented in this paper, including melting, annealing and extension phases of a typical PCR process which has the essence of a convection-diffusion-reaction system. Using this model, we can simulate the PCR process in series of reaction cycles. Numerical results show that the average sample velocity plays a significant role in affecting the amplification efficiency. Also, appropriate combination of the PCR mixture is important for high-quality DNA amplification. Giving a large initial DNA concentration range, the continuous flow PCR scheme holds excellent real-time detection ability theoretically. The present numerical model bridges the temperature distribution to the real DNA amplification, and thereby is able to successfully predict continuous flow PCR properties which are important for the chip design.
WANG ShiYing1 & WANG Wei2,3 1 School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
A hybrid microsystem with separately functioned temperature controlling substrate and sample operating fluidic microchannel was developed to demonstrate a reconfigurable microfluidics scheme.The temperature controlling substrate integrated a micro heater and a temperature sensor by using traditional silicon-based micromechanical system(MEMS)technique,which guaranteed high performance and robust reliability for repeatable usage.The sample operating fluidic microchannel was prepared by poly-(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS)based soft lithography technique,which made it cheap enough for disposable applications.The PDMS microchannel chip was attached to the temperature controlling substrate for reconfigurable thermal applications.A thin PDMS film was used to seal the microchannel and bridge the functionalized substrate and the sample inside the channel,which facilitated heat transferring and prevented sample contaminating the temperature controlling substrate.Demonstrated by a one dimensional thermal resistance model,the thin PDMS film was important for the present reconfiguration applications.Thermal performance of this hybrid microsystem was examined,and the experimental results demonstrated that the chip system could work stably over hours with temperature variation less than 0.1oC.Multiple PDMS microchannel chips were tested on one heating substrate sequentially with a maximum intra-chip temperature difference of 1.0oC.DNA extracted from serum of a chronic hepatitis B virus(HBV)patient was amplified by this hybrid microsystem and the gel electrophoresis result indicated that the present reconfigurable microfluidic scheme worked successfully.
LEI YinHua 1 ,XIE Fei 1 ,WANG Wei 1,2 ,WANG HaiBin 3 &LI ZhiHong 1,2 1 Institute of Microelectronics,Peking University,Beijing 100871,China
Thin film is a widely used structure in the present microelectromechanical systems （MEMS） and plays a vital role in many functional devices. However, the great size difference between the film＇s thickness and its planar dimensions makes it difficult to study the thin film performance numerically. In this work, a scaling transformation was presented to make the different dimensional sizes equivalent, and thereby, to improve the grid quality considerably. Two numerical experiments were studied to validate the present scaling transformation method. The numerical results indicated that the largest grid size difference can be decreased to one to two orders of magnitude by using the present scaling transformation, and the memory required by the numerical simulation, i.e., the total grid number, could be reduced by about two to three orders of magnitude, while the numerical accuracies with and without this scaling transformation were nearly the same.
