A Lego®-like swappable fluidic module for bio-chem applications

Yi-Fan Hsieh; An-Shik Yang; Jia-Wei Chen; Shao-Kai Liao; Tsung-Wen Su; Shiou-Hwei Yeh; Pei-Jer Chen; Ping-Hei Chen

doi:10.1016/j.snb.2014.07.122

A Lego^®-like swappable fluidic module for bio-chem applications

Sens Actuators B Chem. 2014 Dec 1:204:489-496. doi: 10.1016/j.snb.2014.07.122. Epub 2014 Aug 9.

Authors

Yi-Fan Hsieh¹, An-Shik Yang², Jia-Wei Chen³, Shao-Kai Liao³, Tsung-Wen Su³, Shiou-Hwei Yeh⁴, Pei-Jer Chen⁵, Ping-Hei Chen³

Affiliations

¹ Biomedical Technology and Device Research Laboratories, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu 31040, Taiwan.
² Department of Energy and Refrigerating Air-Conditioning Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei 106, Taiwan.
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan.
⁴ Graduate Institute of Microbiology, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan.
⁵ Graduate Institute of Clinical Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan.

Abstract

A Lego^®-like swappable fluidic module (SFM) is proposed in this research. We designed and fabricated selected modular fluidic components, including functional and auxiliary types that can be effortlessly swapped and integrated into a variety of modular devices to rapidly assemble a fully-portable, disposable fluidic system. In practice, an integrated SFM uses finger-operated, electricity-free pumps to deliver fluids. Using a swirling mechanism, the vortex mixer can rapidly mix two liquids in a one-shot mixing event. We demonstrate the successful application of this SFM in several microfluidic applications, such as the synthesis of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) from chloroauric acid (HAuCl₄), and nucleic acid amplification from the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) with a capillary convective polymerase chain reaction (ccPCR).

Keywords: AuNPs synthesis; Capillary convective polymerase chain reaction; Lego®-like swappable fluidic module.