Low-Cost, Rapid Prototyping of a Microfluidic Biosensor Cartridge for On-Farm Diagnostics

With the objective of containing and preventing infectious diseases, prevention is seen as a key element in ensuring animal health aligns with correct regulatory standards. One such infectious disease is the Bovine Viral Diarrhoea. It is present worldwide, impacting financially within the beef and dairy industry. Currently, a BVD eradication programme consists of sending potentially infected samples to laboratories for analysis. This can be a time consuming process, thus enabling the opportunity of a possible disease to spread to other animals. This paper will report a microfluidic cartridge that allows electrochemical sensors to migrate from lab to field, using a straightforward, low-cost rapid prototyping method of a microfluidic system. Once the sample is placed into the cartridge it is subsequently inserted in a handheld console that will transmit results via Bluetooth to a phone app. The fabrication method employed to achieve this goal, is dependent on the utilisation of a desktop vinyl cutter. This machine facilitates a rapid prototyping method which can, with the use of double-sided pressure sensitive (PSA) material; consistently achieve microchannels with a minimum width of 200 μm. The microfluidic platform is assembled using PSA and PMMA (Poly (methyl methacrylate)) centred on a chip, which in turn consists of 6 electrochemical sensors. This process subsequently performs faradaic electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry to detect the disease. A microfluidic design and full assembly is presented, using this rapid prototyping method. Due to its ease of fabrication, the entire process, from materials to testing, can be completed speedily to provide a leak-free microfluidic platform utilising inexpensive equipment.