A Polymer-Based Microfluidic Sensor for Biochemical Detection

Calorimeter is a powerful instrument that enables high-throughput detection of biochemical reaction heat without any label and immobilization of reactants. This paper introduces a novel, highly-sensitive, little reactant consumption, miniaturized microfluidic chip calorimeter integrated with three identical PDMS microfluidic chambers of
$1.28~\mu $
L and a polyimide-based flexible heat sensor. The flexible heat sensor contains a Bi-Sb thermopile and three identical micro heaters. The device demonstrates a novel response time of 0.716s,the heat detection sensitivity was about 5.3V/W and the heating power detecting resolution was about 51nW in static state. The device showed excellent performance in heat detection of ethanol dilution and microbial metabolism (BS168 and HT66 bacteria suspension) exotherm. The micro fluidic chip calorimeter has great potential to be applied in biochemical process monitoring applications.