Parallel-plate lab-on-a-chip based on digital microfluidics for on-chip electrochemical analysis

This paper describes an electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD) digital microfluidic-based lab-on-a-chip (LOC) integrated with on-chip electrochemical microsensor by IC compatible fabrication process, and its application for the entire online biosensing process capable of fully automatic analysis for ferrocenemethanol (FcM) and dopamine (DA). In this work, we made full use of the parallel-plate structure of the EWOD digital microfluidic device to fabricate the microfluidic module on the bottom plate and the three-microelectrode-system-integrated electrochemical cell together with patterned ground electrode on the top plate. The proposed LOC possesses the multifunction of: (1) creating, merging and transporting of microliter-level sample droplets, (2) online biosensing, and (3) droplets recycling. The three-electrode-integrated microsensor not only reveals a sensitive electrochemical detection for FcM in a wide concentration range (10 µM–1.0 mM), but also shows good stability, selectivity and reproducibility for surface-controlled detection of DA. The calibration of DA was linear for concentration from 1.0 to 50.0 µM with a high sensitivity of 2145 nA µM−1 cm−2 (R2 = 0.9933) and estimated detection limit of 0.42 µM (signal/noise ratio of 3). This work shows the promise of state-of-the-art digital microfluidic biosensors for fully automatic online bioanalysis in a future LOC to perform on-chip biomedical protocols in vitro diagnostic assays.