Rapid microfluidic distillation and detection chip systems

Abstract

The rapid microfluidic distillation/detection chips and systems proposed in this study provide an innovative low-cost and straightforward means of achieving detection processes in the food industry Relative convenient and fast microchip system still can improve the detecting efficiency and it is proved in this study High efficiency in detecting establishments can offer more number of service to maintain the food safety This study has used a commercial CO2 laser machining system to ablate microchannels on PMMA and glass substrates The defocused laser beam technology can significant improvement in the surface roughness The results presented in this study have confirmed that CO2 laser ablation represents a low cost and versatile approach for the rapid prototyping of PMMA-based and glass-based microfluidic devices Furthermore CO2 laser ablation has the potential for adaptation to the mass production of microfluidic chips; thereby making possible the fabrication of low-cost disposable microfluidic chips for a wide variety of biological chemical and medical applications Compared to traditional distillation systems the rapid distillation microfluidic chips proposed in this study have many advantages including fast distillation process small sample / reagent volumes a simple structure a straightforward/ fast operational procedure and a low cost The experimental results have shown that the proposed sulfur dioxide distillation chip system achieves a distillation efficiency of as much as 94% and the obtained measurements of the sulfur dioxide concentration deviate by no more than 8 6% from those obtained using a commercial large-scale system Similarly the proposed methanol distillation chip system achieves a distillation efficiency of as much as 96% and a measurement performance which deviates by no more than 3% from that of a commercial system Five detection chips (designated as Mks I~V) have been proposed in this study The Mk I chip comprises a single mixer while the Mk II chip has two mixers thereby avoiding the need for additional mixing devices in the detection process The Mk III and IV chips each contain a single mixer and incorporate a collection tank which also serves as a detection chamber when the chip is inserted into the trough of the spectrophotometer The Mk V type chip is essentially a microfluidic mixer with additional storage and collecting functions The Mk V type chip can execute six to ten assignments In the rapid microfluidic detection system has been proposed including an air pressure injector module and a simple LED / photodiode detection module

Date of Award	2015 Jun 15
Original language	English
Supervisor	Ruey-Jen Yang (Supervisor)