Miniaturized PCR chips for nucleic acid amplification and analysis: latest advances and future trends

Zhang, Chunsun; Xing, Da

Due to the small dimensions of the PCR chips, the direct temperature/fluid measurement remains a challenge. Moreover, direct measurement cannot provide any static and/or dynamic information on temperature/fluid before micromachining of PCR chips. In order to address this issue, numerical simulation is thought to be a very effective approach and can provide the opportunity to evaluate flow, thermal and even chemical processes during PCR (4). Within the past two years, this approach has been widely used on the chamber-based stationary PCR chips (10, (12) (13) (14) 20, 21, 24, 25, 36, 39, 51, 70) . Meanwhile, a great attention has been focused on the numerical simulation of the continuous-flow PCR chips (23, 30, 41, 42, 66, 87, 88) . For example, Gui and Ren developed a 3D model to simulate the electrical potential field, flow field and temperature field in an electro-osmosisbased continuous-flow PCR chip (87) . Tsai