Electronic Sensing for Microfluidic Devices

Abstract : 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.