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Decreasing microfluidic evaporation loss using the HMDL method: open systems for nucleic acid amplification and analysis

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Abstract

Evaporation is of great importance when dealing with microfluidic devices with open air/liquid interfaces due to the large surface-to-volume ratio. For devices utilizing a thermal reaction (TR) reservoir to perform a series of biological and chemical reactions, excessive heat-induced microfluidic evaporation can quickly lead to reaction reservoir dry out and failure of the overall device. In this study, we present a simple, novel method to decrease heat-induced fluid evaporation within microfluidic systems, which is termed as heat-mediated diffusion-limited (HMDL) method. This method does not need complicated thermal isolation to reduce the interfacial temperature, or external pure water to be added continuously to the TR chamber to compensate for evaporation loss. The principle of the HMDL method is to make use of the evaporated reaction content to increase the vapor concentration in the diffusion channel. The experimental results have shown that the relative evaporation loss (V loss/V ini) based on the HMDL method is not only dependent on the HMDL and TR region’s temperatures (T HMDL and T TR), but also on the HMDL and TR’s channel geometries. Using the U-shaped uniform channel with a diameter of 200 μm, the V loss/V ini within 60 min is low to 5% (T HMDL = 105°C, T TR = 95°C). The HMDL method can be used to design open microfluidic systems for nucleic acid amplification and analysis such as isothermal amplification and PCR thermocycling amplification, and a PCR process has been demonstrated by amplifying a 135-bp fragment from Listeria monocytogenes genomic DNA.

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Acknowledgments

This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30700155), the Key Program of NSFC-Guangdong Joint Funds of China (U0931005), the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT0829) and the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) (2007AA10Z204).

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  1. MOE Key Laboratory of Laser Life Science and Institute of Laser Life Science, College of Biophotonics, South China Normal University, No.55, Zhongshan Avenue West, Tianhe District, 510631, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Chunsun Zhang & Da Xing

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  1. Chunsun Zhang
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  2. Da Xing
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Correspondence to Da Xing.

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Zhang, C., Xing, D. Decreasing microfluidic evaporation loss using the HMDL method: open systems for nucleic acid amplification and analysis. Microfluid Nanofluid 9, 17–30 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-009-0508-4

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