Microfluidic Chips Integrated with Pneumatic Microvalves and Micropumps for Applications of Disease Detection

摘要

The present study reports a microfluidic system using the concept of membrane-movement to design and fabricate micro-pneumatic valves and pumps to form a multiple bio-sensing diagnostic chip. The automatic-bio-sampling system includes a micro-diagnostic chip fabricated by using MEMS (Micro-electro-mechanical-systems) technology and an automatic platform comprising a control circuit, a compressed air source and electromagnetic valve switches. The control circuit is used to regulate the electromagnetic valve switches, causing PDMS membranes to deflect pneumatically and generate valving and pumping effects. The micro-diagnostic chip allows fast detection of diseases, namely, HCV and syphilis. Instead of using traditional pneumatic micropumps, the current study adopts a new design called "spider-web" pumps to increase the pumping rate, and more importantly, improve the uniformity of flow rates in multiple channels. Experimental data show that for multiple diseases diagnosis, the multi bio-sensing chips integrated with the micro-pneumatic valves and the peristaltic micropumps could successfully execute ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) tests. The development of the multi bio-sensing chips could provide a useful tool for bio-sensing and be crucial for micro-total-analysis system.