Design and Thermal Analysis of Sample Block PCR for DNA Amplification

Infectious diseases constitute a major cause of disease burden and more than half a billion Disability Adjusted Life Year's (DALYs) and millions of deaths each year. They have large effect on children under 5 years of age especially. To provide the healthy life to people the disease diagnoses is essential on early stages so that an early cure can control the disease. For the purpose of drug discovery, Infectious disease diagnostics, on site evidence collection system pathology and food science, the Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method is used. Polymerase chain response (PCR) can make duplicates of specific parts of DNA by thermal cycling. An average three-step PCR incorporates denaturation of double stranded DNA (92-98 °C), the primers annealing (50-60°C), and extension of single strand DNA to double strand DNA (68-72 °C). Each thermal cycle can double the quantity of DNA, and 20-35 cycles can create a large number of DNA copies. The continuous flow microfluidic device are not suitable for commercial purpose. The static chamber device available in market for 30 microliter sample size, these devices are much expensive. In this study we designed a Well type Sample block for the sample volume of 50 microliter. The Sample block is in rectangular shape 48 (6 by 8) wells with each 50 microliter capacity. The sample block material is aluminum, tubes are made of polypropylene and tube cap made with transparent glass. Initially the cyclic temperature boundary condition is applied and for final analysis thermoelectric component is placed at the base of sample block. The ATE1-TC-70-15AS is number of thermoelectric module, which consisted at 70 cells. Other information can be obtained about Peltier from Analog technologies catalog. The device results are compared with CFX Bio-Rad design and current study shows the better temperature response rate, temperature uniformity with in fluid sample. The sample block can be made only by machining process. Hence, the proposed scheme paves the way for low-cost point-of-care diagnostics, system integration and device miniaturization, realizing a portable microfluidic device applicable for on-site and direct field uses.