Electronic Sensing for Microfluidic Devices

摘要

Rapid characterization of biological specimens is increasingly important in research and clinical applications. While current optical and chemical detection techniques can effectively analyze biological systems, a number of disadvantages restrict their versatility. As examples: most samples require advanced processing such as PCR amplification or chemical treatment, and photobleaching often limits the optical probing of fluorophore-tagged samples. Purely electronic techniques, such as those we propose here, provide solutions to many such problems, as they can probe a sample directly without requiring special modification. Equally important, readout is direct and, consequently, sensors can be easily integrated with electronics, making the entire system compact and robust. We developed a series of integrated microfluidic devices that are capable of detecting DNA in cells and the cell- surface expression of proteins on the cell-surface walls. As well, we developed an integrated microfluidic chip that is capable of performing simultaneous measurement of several sensors.