an optical approach for the determination of droplet volumes in nanodispensing光学方法测定滴nanodispensing卷.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Automated Methods and Management in Chemistry Volume 2009, Article ID 198732, 10 pages doi:10.1155/2009/198732 Research Article An Optical Approach for the Determination of Droplet Volumes in Nanodispensing 1 ¨ 1 2 Kerstin Thurow, Thomas Kruger, and Norbert Stoll 1 Center for Life Science Automation, F.-Barnewitz-Street 8, 18119 Rostock, Germany 2 Institute of Automation, University of Rostock, R.-Wagner-Street 31, 18119 Rostock, Germany Correspondence should be addressed to Kerstin Thurow, kerstin.thurow@celisca.de Received 5 February 2009; Accepted 10 February 2009 Recommended by Peter Stockwell This paper looks at the use of drop-on-demand technology in automated life science laboratories. One significant feature of the droplets generated is the enormously high uniformity under constant conditions. However, there is also a relatively strong dependency on environmental conditions. Many different kinds of liquids are used in laboratory applications, some with unknown properties in advance. In light of this and the special way in which the droplets are created, there is one major question which needs answering in relation to the use of this technology in the area of laboratory automation: What is the volume of the drops generated? This paper will present a solution which can be applied in practice. Besides the technical implementation demonstrated, further alternatives will also be presented. Ultimately, dosing systems with greater autonomy should result from the optimizations demonstrated in this paper. Copyright © 2009 Kerstin Thurow et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Comm