A High-Sensitivity Microfluidic Chip Calorimeter for Biochemical Reaction Monitoring Applications

Miniaturized calorimeter can monitor biochemical procedures by just detecting heat change during the reaction with minimum reagent consumption and short inspection time. This paper presents a high-sensitivity chip calorimeter fabricated by micromachining process. The device is composed of a polyimide-based flexible Bi-Sb thermopile thermal sensor and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic chambers. With the novel design of the thermopile, the device has a high heat power sensitivity of 5.3V/W and a thermal response time about 0.93s which is good enough for real time reaction heat monitoring. With three identical 1μL PDMS chambers, the calorimeter can detect the heat of biochemical process with very little sample consumption. The chip calorimeter has prospects to realize high-throughput biochemical process monitoring and analysis in biological, chemical, pharmaceutical and medical applications.