Enhanced microfabrication capabilities of thermoplastics elastomers for CD lab system including: Lysing, PCR and hybridization microfluidic functions

We demonstrate the feasibility to fabricate and assemble at low-cost a complex multi-level microfluidic CD hybrid system made through the assembly of only two polymer layers. The design demonstrated in this work integrate in a single molded thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) layer all the microfluidic features necessary to build a nucleic acid testing device. This design would allow for cell lysis, sample metering and clarification, mixing with PCR buffer, PCR amplification, exonuclease digestion of amplified DNA, self-venting and finally DNA hybridization on a microarray located on the upper layer of the CD.