A micromachined low-power-consumption portable PCR system

This paper presents a portable system for Polymerase Chain Reaction. The developed device incorporates a platinum thin film thermo-cycler fabricated using a simple and reliable Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System (MEMS) process and a battery-operated thermo-cycler controller. The portable system is comprised of two basic components, namely a PCR control module and a PCR chip module. The PCR chip module is fabricated from cheap and biocompatible soda-lime glass and PDMS materials, and contains a micro-heater and a micro-temperature sensor in a 10 μL PDMS micro chamber provided to load DNA samples. An accurate temperature is maintained within the PCR chamber by means of a predictive control system which operates in conjunction with a neural network. When the system is powered by a portable 9 V DC battery, the developed system is capable of increasing the temperature in the chamber at a rate of 20.5 °C per second and decreasing the temperature at 7 °C per second over a working range of 50 °C to 95 °C. The measured temperature shift at the target temperature is less than 0.2 °C and the average power consumption of the portable system is less than 1.2 Watts. The capability of the developed system in performing the detection of infectious diseases is verified using the portable system to successfully detect the species-specific gene and the antimicrobial resistant determinant respectively in Salmonella. The development of the portable PCR system could be crucial for on-site diagnosis of infectious diseases.