Surfactant Additives for Digital Microfluidic Devices for High Protein Content Droplet Transport

摘要

A surfactant additive, having 16 ethylene oxide repeat units and 18 propylene oxide repeat units, which is used herein as a droplet additive or to coat the DMF driven electrode surface Disclosed is ethylenediaminetetrakis (ethoxylate-block-propoxylate) tetrol (known by its trade name as Tetronic 90R4), which has the ability to handle high protein content liquids (eg whole blood) on digital microfluidic chips Improve dramatically. This surfactant prevents protein adsorption and fouling on the surface of the DMF electrode to the extent not possible so far. In particular, this surfactant enables droplet manipulation of undiluted whole blood for 1 hour per electrode ( 150 times better than what is possible with any known additive). This improvement in dealing with high protein content media will revolutionize blood-based diagnostics on digital microfluidic platforms. [Selected figure] Figure 2