Continuous-Flow Polymerase Chain Reaction Chip by Water Cooling

A novel continuous-flow polymerase chain reaction (PCR) chip has been analyzed. It operates by cycling a prepared sample within three temperature zones. Two temperature zones are controlled by two thermal controllers and the other is controlled by the flow rate of the fluid inside a cooling channel under a glass chip. The chip system consists of the reaction PDMS chip, a cover glass chip, a cooling channel, and is equipped with cartridge heaters and thermocouples for temperature control. Commercial software is utilized to determine the chip materials that are responsible for creating the denaturation, annealing and extension temperature zones within the chip. Therefore we utilize this chip to perform PCR experiments. Results show that DNA templates are amplified successfully.