A Low Temperature Cofired Ceramic (LTCC) Microfluidic Calorimeter for Biosensing

The expense and difficulty of current biomarker detection methods is driving the design of microfluidic detection platforms. A ceramic microfluidic biosensor has been developed for conducting enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) using a novel polymerization amplified thermal detection (PATD) scheme. Prototype testing has yielded several results that support the viability of this device. It was seen that LTCC is an effective and durable substrate for the temperature sensor. Noise testing with our prototype revealed that our temperature sensors can detect changes as small as 0.01 K. Additional temperature testing showed that the thermistor behavior matches the expected thermistor beta equation. Finally, it was shown that polymerization reaction induction time is inversely proportional to glucose oxidase (GOx) initiator concentration. These preliminary results provide a foundation for future work developing the sensor  into a protein detection device with cancer  prognosis applications.

The long-term goal of this project is to develop a rapid low-cost approach to measure biomarker concentrations for breast cancer prognosis. Current methods for measuring marker concentrations are expensive and inaccessible to  much of the world’s population. A small ceramic chip employing polymerization amplified thermal detection (PATD) would cost much less to produce and analyze.