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A hinge-based aligner for fast, large-scale assembly of microfluidic chips

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Abstract

Microfluidics has shown its vitality in scientific research. But the lack of fast and straightforward approaches for aligning chip and easy-to-control on-chip valve still prevent microfluidic chips from becoming powerful commercial products. This work presents an aligner based on hinge structures, which we call a “hinge aligner”, for aligning microfluidic chips. Two flat chip holders are connected by a connecting rod so that the chip holders can rotate relative to each other along the connecting rod, in the way a hinge works. The two chip holders contain pre-designed recesses for placing two chips which can align chips with 20 μm resolution. Meanwhile, with this hinge aligner, we can easily implement a fully sealed on-chip valve, which can prevent aqueous liquids from leaking even at 80 °C for 30 min. The real immunoassay result shows aligned microfluidic chips can detect protein with improved reproducibility in both high and low concentration of biomarkers.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFA0205901), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21535001, 81730051, 21761142006) the Chinese Academy of Sciences (QYZDJ-SSW-SLH039, 121D11KYSB20170026, XDA16020902) and for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Engineering Research Center for BioNanotechnology and CAS Key Laboratory for Biomedical Effects of Nanomaterials and Nanosafety, CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, National Center for NanoScience and Technology, No. 11 Zhongguancun Beiyitiao, Beijing, 100190, People’s Republic of China

    Lei Mou, Binfeng Hu, Jiangjiang Zhang & Xingyu Jiang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19 A Yuquan Road, Shijingshan District, Beijing, 100049, People’s Republic of China

    Lei Mou, Binfeng Hu, Jiangjiang Zhang & Xingyu Jiang

  3. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, No 1088, Xueyuan Rd., Xili, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, 518055, People’s Republic of China

    Xingyu Jiang

  4. Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, 63 Duobao Road, Liwan District, Guangzhou, 510150, People’s Republic of China

    Xingyu Jiang

Authors
  1. Lei Mou
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  2. Binfeng Hu
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  3. Jiangjiang Zhang
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  4. Xingyu Jiang
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Correspondence to Xingyu Jiang.

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Electronic supplementary material

ESM 1

Additional supporting information including the ANSYS simulation result and design of the microfluidic chip and the hinge. In addition, results of detection ten blank sample are presented in the Table S3. (DOCX 812 kb)

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Mou, L., Hu, B., Zhang, J. et al. A hinge-based aligner for fast, large-scale assembly of microfluidic chips. Biomed Microdevices 21, 69 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-019-0404-y

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