Reagent integrators for the controlled release of pico-grams of reagents in self-powered microfluidic chips

Abstract

Microfluidic chips have the potential to revolutionize the field of in vitro diagnostics, owning to their ability to quickly and accurately analyze small volumes of samples and multiplexed analysis. The downscaling of diagnostic tests brings up new challenges for the deposition and distribution of small amounts of reagents inside a microfluidic chip. We introduce functional microfluidic elements, which we call reagent integrators (RIs), for a controlled release of picogram amounts of reagents with a defined degree of dilution. We demonstrate the impact of RIs on one-step immunoassays.