Regeneratable PCR array chip

Abstract

The development and applications of polymerase chain reaction(PCR) for DNA detection and quantification are becoming increasingly important in molecular diagnostics and drug development processes. Comparing to conventional PCR instruments, PCR microfluidoc devices, or commonly known as PCR microchips, have many advantages such as reduced time, reduced sample and reagent consumption, high throughput, etc. However, most of the reported PCR microfluidic devices involved tedious PCR mixture loading process which required an expensive liquid dispensing robot. Furthermore, few efforts have been made to investigate the regenerative capability of PCR microfluidic devices which is crucial in continuous online detection of target samples. Thus a regeneratable PCR array chip was designed and tested in this thesis.