MICRO THERMAL CYCLER (NYP ID: 0078)

This invention uses bulk heating and cooling principle wherein the entire thermal cycling block is heated or cooled using peltier elements and controlled through a thermocouple-sensed feedback. An insulator block completely isolates this thermal block from the polymer reactor substrate except for a few selective micro pockets created by employing through-block metallic vias. These vias provide a perfect heat conducting path for fast temperature transitions with the highest uniformity of the reaction wells on the polymer reactor served by them. This selective heat transfer mechanism is able to execute PCR thermal cycles with temperature ramps in the range of 7-10 o C per second. The effective volume per reaction well on the polymer reactor is 7 ul.