Microwave Heating System for the LAMP Technique based DNA Amplification Process

An alternative design of the heating system associated with Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) technique used in Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) amplification is proposed. The system features the heat source equipped with the Archimedean spiral heating coil whose dimension is designed to support the maximum blood droplet size of 3 μL. The coil is supplied by the 500 mA, 2.4 GHz AC current. This specific frequency is selected since its generator is cheap, compact, and widely available although the frequency is not in the coil's resonance range. The simulation model consists not only of the LAMP process's heat source but also surrounding lab-on-a-chip (LOC) components. The simulation result shows that the model temperature increases monotonically with the process time. It takes around 185 seconds for the blood droplet to reach the target of 60°C. The heating time decreases only slightly at 5-40 GHz operating frequency. Therefore, the proposed 2.4 GHz heating system is considered viable for the LAMP process.