Vacuum supported liquid waste handling for dna extraction on centrifugally operated Lab-on-a-Chip systems

We present a reliable liquid waste containment for centrifugally operated lab-on-a-chip systems that works even for highly wetting reagents. It is based on the passive generation and enclosure of vacuum in a closed storage chamber that prevents all liquids from capillary reflux into the microfluidic channel network. The new waste handling presented here enabled the implementation of an integrated deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) extraction chemistry without contamination risks based on purely passive structures. Using a 32 muL whole blood sample we achieved an extraction of 290 ng plusmn 80 ng DNA in 100 muL of eluate.