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Poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) has become an attractive material when working in the field of microfluidics, mainly because of the rapid prototyping process it involves. The increased surface volume ratio in microchannels makes the interaction between sample and material surface highly important, evident when handling complex biological samples such as plasma or blood. This study demonstrates a new grade of non-covalent heparin surface that adds efficient anticoagulant property to the PDMS material. The surface modification is a simple and fast one-step process performed at neutral pH, optimal when working with closed microsystems. The heparin formed a uniform and functional coating on hydrophobic PDMS with comparatively high level of antithrombin-binding capacity. In addition, long-term studies revelaed that the immobilized heparin was more or less stable in the microchannels over a time of three weeks. Recalcified plasma in contact with native PDMS showed complete coagulation after 1 h, while no fibrin formation was detected in plasma incubated on heparin-coated PDMS within the same time. In conclusion, we see the heparin coating developed and evaluated in this study as a tool that greatly facilitates the use of PDMS in microfluidics dealing with plasma or blood samples.

Up to today, the number of CD4(+) lymphocytes remains the most important biological marker to determine the clinical stage of an HIV-infection. Analysis by flow cytometry, the standard method used today, is unsuitable in many developing countries, because of high costs involved and practical inconveniences. We here present the concept of an inexpensive PDMS-based point-of-care device for CD4(-)count. A simple fluorescence microscope for stained leucocytes counting is the only detection equipment needed. The biosensor surface consists of an initial heparin-based coating that adds hydrophilicity and thromboresistance to the PDMS material. The specific capturing chemistry is based on an avidin/biotin-antibody surface architecture. Pure capillary forces draw whole blood, as well as rinsing buffer, into the biosensor channel, minimizing the need of external equipment. Detection of the captured cells was performed by fluorescence imaging of HOECHST (stains cell nuclei) and CD3-FITC signals. It was shown that the non-specific adsorption of CD4(-) leucocytes was minimal to none. and the detection could therefore be done by only counting the easy identifiable HOECHST+ cells. Characterization of the biosensor coating process was additionally performed with the quartz crystal microbalance-dissipation technique.

We here describe an alternative method of embedding ftinctionalized capillaries into microdevices fabricated in PDMS. The capillaries have square-shaped outer dimensions and fit into elastic PDMS channel networks of similar dimensions. By modifying the capillary off-chip, the technique makes it possible to integrate a new chip function without risking contamination of already existing chemically patterned areas because of new reagent solutions. Leak-free insertion of these capillaries has earlier been reported, where a thin layer of uncured PDMS bonded the capillary to the microchannel and the lid structure. In this new approach, oxygen plasma is used to bond the square capillary to the PDMS, eliminating the risk of dogging the microsystem with uncured prepolymer. The new embedding technique was exemplified and evaluated by inserting a square capillary piece containing monolithic sol-gel for sample preconcentration application. The assembled microdevice was run with mass spectrometric detection, showing that peptides were preconcentrated without leakage from either the sol-gel itself or around the inserted capillary. Repeated preconcentration runs showed migration times better than 3% for all peptides. We believe that the presented microchip assembling technique greatly simplifies the insertion of functionalized capillary pieces, e.g., an initial preconcentrator to a PDMS device containing other downstream modules.

A new method for instant oxidation of closed, bonded microchannels is presented and evaluated. By placing the tip-formed electrode of a corona plasma equipment in the reservoir of a PDMS microstructure, the plasma spark can spread into the microchannel and oxidize the inner PDMS channel walls. By applying this process, the non-specific adsorption of hydrophobic affinity analytes is markedly decreased, here evaluated with the fluorescent dye Rhodamine B and standard protein BSA. The results show that the surface adsorption in plasma-treated channels is reduced significantly, e.g. the amount of BSA adsorbed at 35 mm distance from the reservoir is only 35% of the amount of BSA adsorbed in non-treated channels. The surface shows very low adsorption during the first 200 min after oxidation, and has recovered (90%) its hydrophobicity first after 24 h. This method of instant surface oxidation has in our group been widely used to simplify microfluidic studies of microstructure prototypes, since the need of other more complicated surface modifications to lower analyte adsorption is eliminated.