Decreasing microfluidic evaporation loss using the HMDL method: open systems for nucleic acid amplification and analysis |
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Authors: | Chunsun Zhang Da Xing |
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Affiliation: | (1) MOE Key Laboratory of Laser Life Science and Institute of Laser Life Science, College of Biophotonics, South China Normal University, No.55, Zhongshan Avenue West, Tianhe District, 510631 Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China; |
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Abstract: | Evaporation is of great importance when dealing with microfluidic devices with open air/liquid interfaces due to the large
surface-to-volume ratio. For devices utilizing a thermal reaction (TR) reservoir to perform a series of biological and chemical
reactions, excessive heat-induced microfluidic evaporation can quickly lead to reaction reservoir dry out and failure of the
overall device. In this study, we present a simple, novel method to decrease heat-induced fluid evaporation within microfluidic
systems, which is termed as heat-mediated diffusion-limited (HMDL) method. This method does not need complicated thermal isolation
to reduce the interfacial temperature, or external pure water to be added continuously to the TR chamber to compensate for
evaporation loss. The principle of the HMDL method is to make use of the evaporated reaction content to increase the vapor
concentration in the diffusion channel. The experimental results have shown that the relative evaporation loss (V
loss/V
ini) based on the HMDL method is not only dependent on the HMDL and TR region’s temperatures (T
HMDL and T
TR), but also on the HMDL and TR’s channel geometries. Using the U-shaped uniform channel with a diameter of 200 μm, the V
loss/V
ini within 60 min is low to 5% (T
HMDL = 105°C, T
TR = 95°C). The HMDL method can be used to design open microfluidic systems for nucleic acid amplification and analysis such
as isothermal amplification and PCR thermocycling amplification, and a PCR process has been demonstrated by amplifying a 135-bp
fragment from Listeria monocytogenes genomic DNA. |
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Keywords: | |
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