Quantitative biological assays with on-chip calibration using versatile architecture and collapsible chambers

A new microfluidic device composed of pneumatically actuated multiple collapsible chambers arranged in an X-Y architecture has been developed. Elementary fluidic functions such as fluid transfer, volumes calibration, mixing, aliquoting and linear dilutions can be parallelized, achieving automatically and rapidly complex operations. The ultimate aim is to perform fully integrated quantitative assays such as complete enzymatic assays and Elisa assays by using existing kits and an on-chip calibration. Both objectives require to manipulate a high range of volumes (from 1 μL to 100 μL) while keeping an excellent accuracy. Furthermore, quantitative assays have to be highly repeatable to be relevant. This challenge has been successfully addressed by combining three original characteristics. First, a versatile architecture has been designed allowing to be adapted to any quantitative protocol. Then, a hyper elastic membrane with a high elongation rate and switching between two polymer solid layers has been used to control precisely the fluid volumes at each inlet and outlet chambers. Finally, repeatability was obtained by including linear dilutions to generate a standard curve and to calibrate the system.