Electrokinetically controlled real-time polymerase chain reaction in microchannel using Joule heating effect

In this work, a new method to control polymerase chain reaction (PCR) thermal cycling in a microchannel using Joule heating effect was presented. Joule heating was generated internally by the current flow through the buffer solution in an electrokinetically-driven microfluidic chip without external heater component. Numerical simulations were developed and conducted to determine the parameters required to achieve the desired thermal cycling. A PDMS-based microchannel PCR chip was fabricated and tested. The power consumption was only 1.3 W for such a Joule heating-controlled PCR chip. To demonstrate the feasibility of using Joule heating to control thermal cycling, a DNA fragment of Escherichia coli O157:H7 stx1 was successfully amplified by a two-temperature TaqMan real-time polymerase chain reaction.