Superhydrophobic surface supported bioassay--an application in blood typing

This study presents a new application of superhydrophobic surfaces in conducting biological assays for human blood typing using a liquid drop micro reactor. The superhydrophobic substrate was fabricated by a simple printing technique with Teflon powder. The non-wetting and weak hysteresis characteristics of superhydrophobic surfaces enable the blood and antibody droplets to have a near-spherical shape, making it easy for the haemagglutination reaction inside the droplet to be photographed or recorded by a digital camera and then analyzed by image analysis software. This novel blood typing method requires only a small amount of blood sample. The evaluation of assay results using image analysis techniques offers potential to develop high throughput operations of rapid blood typing assays for pathological laboratories. With the capability of identifying detailed red blood cell agglutination patterns and intensities, this method is also useful for confirming blood samples that have weak red blood cell antigens.