Planar microreactor for biochemical application made from silicon and polymer films

Recently the progress of life science has been increasing rapidly, and the importance of the microfluidics for DNA analysis systems has been widely recognized, especially in medical fields. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is an essential technique for DNA assay of various diseases and it has been a strong requirement to shorten the total of PCR cycles more and more. We developed the microreactor with a single cell for PCR using fabrication technologies of MEMS. The reactor body and cover were sealed using high thickness PDMS prototyping film without using adhesive in order to achieve repeat grabbing motion for direct sample injection, resumption and cleansing the reaction cell. Good reproducibility of the heat cycling was obtained. The heating rate and cooling rate during PCR was 6.8 and 2.7°C, respectively, which well corresponds to the design parameters. The homogenous temperature distribution of variance less than 2.0°C was obtained. It is demonstrated that amplification of the DNA was successfully achieved by using the microreactor.