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Updated: Oct 31, 2025
Electrowetting-based Digital Microfluidics Platform for Automated Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay
Published on: February 23, 2020
"One-to-three" droplet generation in digital microfluidics for parallel chemiluminescence immunoassays
Kai Jin1, Chenxuan Hu2, Siyi Hu2
1Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Cross-Scale Micro and Nano Manufacturing, Nanophotonics and Biophotonics Key Laboratory of Jilin Province, School of Science, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun, Jilin province 130022, P.R.China. lijh@cust.edu.cn and CAS Key Laboratory of Bio-medical Diagnostics, Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 88 Keling Road, Suzhou, Jiangsu province 215163, P.R.China. mahb@sibet.ac.cn.
Abstract:
In digital microfluidics, droplet generation is a fundamental operation for quantitative liquid manipulation. The generation of well-defined micro-droplets on a chip with restricted device geometries has become a real obstacle for digital microfluidics platforms to be used in parallel for in vitro diagnostic applications. Here, we propose a "one-to-three" droplet splitting technique that is able to generate sub-microlitre droplets beyond the "well-known" geometry limit in electrowetting-on-dielectric digital microfluidics. Accordingly, we realized an on-chip magnetic bead chemiluminescence immunoassay for parallel detection with the "one-to-three" technique. With the help of the generated micro droplets, we were able to retain the magnetic beads by a significantly reduced magnetic force. We have shown the detection of five B-type natriuretic peptide analyte samples on a single chip for around 10 minutes. The correlation coefficient of the calibration curve was 0.9942, and the detection limit was lower than 5 pg mL-1.
