Department of Biomedical Engineering, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794, USA.
Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA.
Analyst. 2023 Dec 18;149(1):100-107. doi: 10.1039/d3an01869e.
Partitioning is the core technology supporting digital assays. It divides a sample into thousands of individual reactors prior to amplification and absolute quantification of target molecules. Thermoplastics are attractive materials for large scale manufacturing, however they have been seldomly used for fabricating partitioning arrays. Patitioning in thermoplastic devices has proven difficult due to the challenge of efficiently displacing the air trapped in the nanoliter structures during priming of thousands of chambers. Here, we report the design of an array of chambers made of thermoplastics where the progression of the liquid-air interface is controlled by capillary effects. Our device performs robust partitioning over a wide range of pressures and can be actuated at low pressure by a simple micropipette. Our thermoplastic device lays the foundation to cost-effective and instrument-free partitioning platforms, which could be deployed in low-resource settings.
分区是支持数字分析的核心技术。它在对靶分子进行扩增和绝对定量之前，将样品分为数千个单独的反应器。热塑性塑料是大规模制造的有吸引力的材料，但它们很少用于制造分区阵列。由于在为数千个腔室加注时有效地置换纳米级结构中被困空气的挑战，因此在热塑性器件中进行分区已被证明很困难。在这里，我们报告了一种由热塑性塑料制成的腔室阵列的设计，其中液体-空气界面的进展由毛细作用控制。我们的设备在很宽的压力范围内都能可靠地进行分区，并且可以通过简单的微量移液器在低压下进行操作。我们的热塑性设备为具有成本效益且无需仪器的分区平台奠定了基础，这些平台可以在资源有限的环境中部署。
