A microfluidic device providing continuous-flow polymerase chain reaction heating and cooling

Abstract

The objective of this study is to describe a new type of microfluidic device that could be used to manipulate fluid temperature in many microfluidic applications. The key component is a composite material containing a thermally conductive phase placed in a purposeful manner to manipulate heat flow into and out of an embedded microchannel. In actual use, the device is able to vary temperature along a defined flow path with remarkable precision. As a demonstration of capability, a functional prototype was designed and fabricated using four layers of patterned copper laminated between alternating layers of polyimide and acrylic. The key fabrication steps included laser micromachining, acid etching, microchannel formation, and hot lamination. In order to achieve the desired temperature variations along the microchannel, an outer optimization loop and an inner finite element analysis loop were used to iteratively obtain a near-optimal copper pattern. With a minor loss of generality, admissible forms were restricted to comb-like patterns. For a given temperature profile, the pattern was found by refining a starting guess based on a deterministic rubric. Thermal response was measured using fine thermocouples placed at critical locations along the microchannel wall. At most of these points, the agreement between measured and predicted temperatures was within 1 °C, and temperature gradients as high as ±45 °C mm−1 (equivalent to ±90 °C s−1 at 2 μl min−1 flow rate) were obtained within the range of 59–91 °C. The particular profile chosen for case study makes it possible to perform five cycles of continuous-flow polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in less than 15 s, i.e. it entails five successive cycles of cooling from 91 to 59 °C, rapid reheating from 59 to 73 °C, slow reheating from 73 to 76 °C, and a final reheating from 73 to 91 °C, using a resistively heated source at 100 °C at and a thermoelectrically cooled sink at 5 °C.