Fully-integrated plastic-antibody-based biochips with easy-to-attach vacuum sources for C-reactive protein sensing

This paper presents a novel fully-integrated plastic-antibody-based biochip with easy-to-attach vacuum source for C-reactive protein sensing. Micropumps are the most popular devices for the microfluidic system especially in point-of-care devices. However, because the difficulty of miniaturizing the pump, most micropumps are complicated in the structure/assembly or not suitable for the disposable devices. In this paper, a fully-integrated biochip including easy-to-attach vacuum source made of shape memory polymer and a plastic antibody film were developed. By the 2 sets of vacuum source and mini-heater, the biochip could achieve two-stage microfluidic control with easy process. The vacuum sources show great performance in the experiment, and with the advantage of compact, simple structure, and east-to-attach with the biochip. The flow rate driven by our vacuum source is up to 15 μl/ml.