Development of a Thermal Cycler for Cell Culture Applications using Isothermal Amplification Technique

Cell culture is an integrated part of many biomedical applications, especially virus or cell detection systems. In such a system, a compact, feasible and precise thermal cycler is highly desired due to the decisive role of temperature in the cell culturing process. This study proposes a novel design of thermal cycler to improve the ease of manipulation and fabrication, while maintaining the required accuracy of temperature handling. Specifically, the propsed system uses a popular semiconductor component called Peltier as heat generation source, which operates efficiently in the range of 15°C to 80°C. A relatively large operation range ensures that the proposed Peltier-based heating device could well fit in most temperature-dependent applications, including cell culturing process. Additionally, the system behavior is controlled by PID algorithm to improve the efficiency of temperature regulation. The system performance is verified in Isothermal Amplification-based cell culture application, which shows competitive result (maximum variation within 1°C) as compared with other thermal cyclers with sophisticated heating technology.