A Micro Polymerase Chain Reaction Module for Integrated and Portable DNA Analysis Systems.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Sensors Volume 2011, Article ID 983430, 7 pages doi:10.1155/2011/983430 Research Article A Micro Polymerase Chain Reaction Module for Integrated and Portable DNA Analysis Systems Elisa Morganti,1 Cristian Collini,1 Cristina Potrich,1 Cristina Ress,1, 2 Andrea Adami,1 Leandro Lorenzelli,1 and Cecilia Pederzolli1 1 FBK-Center for Materials and Microsystems, 38100 Trento, Italy 2 Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento, 38123 Trento, Italy Correspondence should be addressed to Elisa Morganti, morganti@fbk.eu and Leandro Lorenzelli, lorenzel@fbk.eu Received 31 August 2010; Revised 12 November 2010; Accepted 20 January 2011 Academic Editor: P. Siciliano Copyright © 2011 Elisa Morganti et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This work deals with the design, fabrication, and thermal characterization of a disposable miniaturized Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) module that will be integrated in a portable and fast DNA analysis system. It is composed of two independent parts: a silicon substrate with embedded heater and thermometers and a PDMS (PolyDiMethylSiloxane) chamber reactor as disposable element; the contact between the two parts is assured by a mechanical clamping obtained using a Plastic Leaded Chip Carrier (PLCC). This PLCC is also useful, avoid the PCR mix evaporation during the thermal cycles. Finite Element Analysis was used to evaluate the thermal requirements of the device. The thermal behaviour of the device was characterized revealing that the temperature can be