Modeling and Control of Thermal Microsystems

Abstract A thermal microsystem is developed which consists of a microreactor integrated with a platinum sensor/heater, and automation equipment/software such as data acquisition system, control program and graphic user interface. From the control point of view, we analyze the dynamic characteristics of the fabricated microreactor and find some interesting dynamic features. On the basis of the analysis, we suggest an appropriate model structure and estimate the model parameters using the prediction error identification method. Requirements for a high-performance operation are discussed and a nonlinear control strategy is proposed to Iinearize the non linear dynamics of the thermal microsystem. We determine the parameters of the non linear controller using the optimal tuning method. The developed thermal microsystem shows much better control performances compared to commercial polymerase chain reaction (PCR) thermal cyclers. We successfully demonstrate the PCR of plasmid DNA using the thermal microsystem.