A novel DNA amplification chip of polymer-substrate

This main purpose of this research is to develop the polymer material for polymerase chain reaction biochip. The microchip composed of two parts. One is the heater and temperature sensor on a top cover, the other is the microchannel and reaction chamber on a bottom substrate. Two kinds of chip were designed: 1. a glass cover and a TPX substrate, 2. a TPX cover and a TPX substrate. We utilized Poly-4-methyl-pentene-1 as the polymer material. Temperature is the most important in PCR, so the more uniform, the better. And we used different kinds of heater. According to heat conduction simulation, one can find the optimum heater pattern. The simulation result is that the design of long inside distance and short outside distance between heater columns was the optimum one. The temperature controller could reach the heating rate of 20degC/s and the cooling rate of 5degC/s. Thus the PCR process of 10 muL could be achieved for 25 cycles within 35 minutes. Finally, we used the instruments to check DNA amplification result qualitatively and quantitatively. The DNA amplification length was 108 bps. The DNA amplification of long inside distance and short outside distance between heater columns was 90.17 ng/muL, and larger 12 ng/muL than that of equally distances. Excellent correlation between simulation analysis and experimental result was obtained in this study.