A microscale velocity measurement system for lab-on-a-chip applications

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The proposed research aims to develop micro-PIV technology for Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) applications.  A typical Lab-on-a-Chip device is a piece of glass or plastic plate with multiple chemical or biomedical laboratories integrated on it to perform micro-total-analysis. Lab-on-a-Chip devices have many advantages over their traditional counterparts including reduced expensive sample and reagent use, reduced processing time and space requirements, increased throughput and portability, and potentials for point-of-care diagnostics and treatment. However, the development of such attractive devices has been largely hindered due to the lack of the tools for precise design and operational control of the microfluidic platform, which holds and connects all the components of a LOC device. The major difficulty originates from the flow control of the microfluidic platform, which is dependent on solid-liquid interface properties. LOC devices include several components for sample preparation, mixing, dispensing, separation and detection, involving a variety of chemical solutions, biological samples, and chip materials. Therefore, the development of such devices requires a large database of the flow field information for each pair of solid-liquid interfaces. In addition, complex channel geometries and channel layouts make the flow field on a chip very complicated and the flow control very difficult. Micro particle image velocimetry is the only method for flow field measurement in the microscale and is essential for the development of LOC devices with the goal of developing point-of-care diagnostic instruments. The micro-PIV system, requested in this application, will provide urgently needed analytical resources to the research programs of Carolyn Ren and David Johnson. This setup will allow direct velocity measurement of the flow field in various microfluidic chips involving a variety of chemical solutions and samples. Fluorescent particles will be excited by a laser source and then detected by a CCD camera. The stored images will be analyzed using software on a computer to obtain the flow field.