Integrated biophotonic μTAS for flow cytometry and particle detection

摘要

Recent advancements in the integration of photonic technologies with microfluidics for Micro-Total Analysis Systems (μTAS) have paved way for the realization of a lot of potential applications in the field of biosensing and biomedical detections. Some of the prominent features of these integrated μTAS are improved performance, high sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio, reduced consumption of samples and reagents, and portability, among others. In this work, a hybrid integrated biophotonic μTAS on silicon-polymer platform is presented. Herein, the optical fibers are directly integrated with the Silicon microfluidic chip and an Echelle grating based Spectrometer-on-Chip on Silica-on-Silicon (SOS) is integrated with the opto-microfluidic assembly. Flow actuation within the system is enabled by a mechanical Piezo-driven Valveless Micropump (PVM). Finite Element Analysis (FEA) has been carried out in order to study the behavior of the fluid flow within the microfluidic channels due to the piezo actuation, and the geometry of the bio-detection chamber within the microfluidic system has been optimized accordingly in order to obtain no-stagnation flow conditions. The opto-microfluidic performance and the piezo-actuated valveless micropump were characterized in separate experiments. The integrated μTAS was tested for flow cytometry and particle detection using laser induced fluorescence. The experimental results show that the system is suitable for high throughput biodetections.