Design and fabrication of a two-phase diamond nanoparticle aided fast PCR device

Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is an important and prevalent technique in biotechnology because of its crucial role in cloning DNA fragments and diagnostic applications. In the present study, a high-throughput two-phase PCR device is designed and fabricated which utilizes a serpentine microchannel together with a spiral structure. The former is for the droplet-generation and mixing and the latter is for the thermal cycling process. Moreover, the effect of diamond nanoparticles (diamondNP) on the performance of PCR is also investigated while using commercial PCR devices and the fabricated PCR device designed in this study. Using numerical simulation, it is shown that within the simple and easy-to-make microchannel structures designed in this study, there are different transient secondary flows which can help mixing the contents of the droplets including PCR solution and diamondNP. Moreover, a new fabrication process is used for the design of the droplet-generation chip which is applicable for the fabrication of all high-pressure microfluidic devices. It is found that the effect of diamondNPs on the PCR performance depends on the nanoparticle concentration; diamaondNPs can improve the PCR performance more than 5 times. On the other hand, if a high concentration of diamondNPs is used, PCR performance decreases significantly. Moreover, it is shown that the fabricated device is able to do the same PCR procedure faster than the commercial PCR devices.