Acoustic trapping of sub-micrometreparticles within microfluidics particles within microfluidics

Sammanfattning: The aim of this project was to prove that a pre-existing standardmethod for bacterial-DNA extraction can be reduced down to the microscale and in doing so be used in an on-chip setting.The first phase in this project was to identify an appropriate methodand material for droplet generation. The first material to beassessed was poly ethylene glycol (PEG), which proved unstable andtherefore unsuitable. In contrast agarose, with its low gellingtemperature, proved to be a suitable material for droplet generationfor the purpose of this project.The second phase of this project was to design and fabricate anacoustic trapping chip using Si- and glass-wafers. When the agarosedroplets were evaluated inside of the trapping chip, they proved tohave a negative contrast factor, resulting in the droplets beingpushed out along the walls of the trapping chamber. This was solvedby mixing plastic beads in to the agarose solution used for dropletfabrication.The diffusion of particles into the agarose droplets was thenevaluated both inside and outside of the chip in order to prove thatthe chemicals intended to be used during DNA extraction would be ableto diffuse into the droplets.The end conclusion is that the experiments performed in this projecthave proved that the methods, chip designs and materials would workfor bacterial-DNA extraction on-chip.