Microfabricated Tools and Engineering Methods for Sensing Bioanalytes

Author: Rajagopal, Aditya

Year: 2014

Degree: Dissertation (Ph.D.)

Advisor: Scherer, Axel

Committee Members: Tombrello, Thomas A.; Fraser, Scott E.; Vaidyanathan, P. P.; Rutledge, David B.; Baltimore, David L.

Option: Electrical Engineering

DOI: 10.7907/Z9W9575D

Abstract

There is a convergence between the needs of the medical community and the capabilities of the engineering community. For example, the scale of biomedical devices and sensors allow for finer, more cost-effective quantification of biological and chemical targets. By using micro-fabrication techniques, we design and demonstrate a variety of microfluidic sensors and actuators that allow us to interact with a biochemical environment. We demonstrate the performance of microfluidic blood-filtrations chips, immune-diagnostic assays, and evaporative coolers. Furthermore, we show how micro-fabricated platinum filaments can be used for highly localized heating and temperature measurement. We demonstrate that these filaments can be used as miniature IR spectroscopic sources. Finally, we describe and demonstrate novel combinatorial coding methods for increasing the information extracted from biochemical reactions. We show proof-principle of these techniques in the context of Taqman PCR as well as persistence length PCR.

Files