熱氣泡致動器於微流體生醫晶片之應用

Applications of Thermal Bubble Powered Microactuator in Microfluidic Biochips

鄒慶福(Ching-Fu Tsou) ； 黃正翰(Cheng-Han Huang) ； 曾可欣(Keh-Sin Tseng)

《科儀新知》 197期 (2013/12) Pp. 23-35

摘要

微流體晶片已廣泛地應用在生物醫學檢測，其概念是將傳統的大型檢驗機構縮小至單一晶片，使其具有篩選、分離及輸送等功能，同時透過微量檢體即可達成檢測需求，且能有效縮短檢驗時程。有鑑於此，本文提出一種多功能熱氣泡驅動微流體晶片製作技術，即利用微機電製程在矽晶片上直接製作出微流道、電阻式微加熱器以及儲存槽等元件，並透過塊狀的微加熱器產生熱氣泡的致動方式，應用在微珠結構的分離過程。本研究開發的技術具有簡易的製程優勢，只需兩道光罩即可在晶片上同時完成微流道、微閥門、微幫浦以及微混合器等元件結構；此外，利用熱氣泡的驅動方式可以有效地改變流體的流場行為，進而操控特定尺寸的單一微珠進入預設的儲存槽，預期未來該技術可應用在單一生物體之分離與篩選，如羊水中的活性細胞。

並列摘要

Microfluidic chips have been widely used in biomedical applications such as detecting chemical reactions and biological features. The miniaturized system significantly reduces traditional feature sizes and improves complex apparatus to a chip; also including screening, separating, and transmitting functions. They require few samples to accomplish bio-analysis and effectively shorten the cycle time. In this work, we present the implementation of a thermal bubble actuated microfluidic chip with microvalve, micropump and micromixer for microparticle separation, based on a simple process with SOI wafer. Only two pbotolithography processes were required to provide an effective means of manufacturing the bulk microheater and high-aspect-ratio microchannel for microfluidic applications. The feasibility of a thermal bubble pumping fluid to manipulate a microbead with a diameter of 20 μm has also been verified by experiments. It is expected that the proposed microfluidic chip can be applied for the separation of cells, such as live cells in amniotic fluid.