A disposable smart microfluidic platform integrated with on-chip flow sensors

Abstract

Microfluidic devices are powerful tools for biological, biomedical, chemical, and pharmaceutical applications, but their commercialization is still hindered by the lack of methods to automatically control fluid flow in a low-cost, simple, accurate, and safe manner. This study introduces a disposable smart microfluidic platform (DIS-μChip), which can be fully automated and utilized for a wide range of applications. On-chip microfluidic flow sensors are integrated with the platform and placed at all inlet and outlet channels, thereby allowing the DIS-μChip to be fully automated with a pressure control system. Furthermore, these confer a self-diagnosis function through monitoring of all the input and output flow rates. The DIS-μChip consists of a disposable polymeric microchannel superstrate and a permanent multifunctional substrate, which could be assembled and disassembled using only vacuum pressure. The superstrate was fabricated by combining a polydimethylsiloxane microchannel structure with a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) thin film. The substrate contains sense electrodes for the on-chip-integrated flow sensors and functional components for creating an energy field, which can penetrate the PET thin film and manipulate the fluid in the microchannels of the superstrate. Owing to the film-chip technique, the superstrate was disposable and could prevent biological cross-contamination, which cannot be realized with conventional flow sensors. The usefulness of the DIS-μChip was demonstrated by using it to isolate circulating tumor cells from the blood of patients with pancreatic cancer and to obtain cancer-specific genetic information from them with droplet digital PCR.