Abstract
Upscaling of Microfluidic Biosensors Manufacturing by Imprinting, Printing and Lamination Processes on Polymer Foils
Anja Haase, Senior Scientist, JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
Recently developed microfluidic biosensors promise to surpass the performance of classic lateral flow immunoassays (LFIA). Next generations of biosensors could contribute to the solution of the current Covid-19 crisis with rapid antigen tests, also detecting patients with lower viral load (pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers). Nevertheless - sensing elements of LFIA devices are manufactured highly parallel on rolls of cellulose paper - and contrarily, sensing components of most microfluidic devices run through process steps as single chips (injection molding) or wafers with maximum dozens of chips (wafer processing). This limits their potential for upscaling to the demanded millions of chips. As a potential solution, we present the implementation of microfluidic biosensors on polymer foils together with a platform for upscaling by manufacturing on foils from rolls. Patterning of microfluidic channels is done by roll-to-roll (R2R) imprinting, biomolecules (nucleic acids; aptamers; proteins) are printed by R2R microarray-spotting, chips are closed by R2R lamination processes. This manufacturing approach with high degree of process parallelisation (e.g. 50 chips per imprinting tool, throughput of 4500 chip components per hour) is suitable for the test quantities needed for mass screening in case of a pandemic outbreak. The technology is evaluated with the versatile diagnostic platform GENSPEED® (suitable for nucleic acid as well as protein-based assays). In its standard configuration, this platform works with chips from injection molding. In this study, a DNA based rapid test for antibiotics resistant bacteria was transferred to fully foil based chips from the R2R based manufacturing approach and was characterized in the same detection platform. A comparative study demonstrating the successful technology transfer will be presented.
Anja Haase, Senior Scientist, JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
Dr. Anja HAASE (F) studied chemistry at the University of Technology, Graz and finished her doctoral thesis 1999 with the title “Automated flow through digestion system”. 1999 - 2000: Postdoctoral position at University of Oviedo, Spain in the field of fiber sensors. Since 2000 she works as a senior scientist at JOANNEUM RESEARCH in Weiz. She was cluster project leader of the Austrian Nanoinitiative Cluster Project “Isotec”, dealing with the fabrication of an integrated organic sensor platform. Her main fields of interest are large-area patterning with UV-based imprint processes and structural analysis via microscopic and profilometric methods. The application fields are biomimetics, microfluidics, optics, sensing and flexible electronics. She coordinates national and international, funded and industrial research projects.
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