title: Photobleaching-based flow measurement in a commercial capillary electrophoresis chip instrument.
abstract: For microfluidic analytical instruments, a facile, fast, and accurate instrument test is highly demanded. The test includes the quantitative verification of the relationship between pressure drop and flow velocity for the hydrodynamic pump, between the electric voltage and electroosmotic flow (EOF) for the high-voltage supply, and the chip quality. The key point for the test is the measurement of the flow velocity. However, most currently available velocimetries cannot be directly used without any instrumental modification or adding extra instruments. We applied a recently developed Laser Induced Fluorescence Photobleaching Anemometer (LIFPA) for the instrument test through measuring fluid flow velocity in a microfluidic instrument with optical measurement without any modification and extra instrument. We have successfully used the method to test Caliper HTS 250 System from Caliper Life Sciences (Hopkinton, MA) with its own light source and detector. The experimental result demonstrates that this single-point method of measuring flow velocity can be easily used for accurate test of a microfluidic instrument in less than 10 min at extremely low cost without any modification and extra instrument.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Mechanical Engineering & Biomedical Engineering Program, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA. wanggu@engr.sc.edu
authors.forename: Guiren R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Ian
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Sas
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: William P
authors.initials: WP
authors.lastname: Janzen
authors.forename: C Nicholas
authors.initials: CN
authors.lastname: Hodge
mesh_terms: D053841:Electroosmosis; D019075:Electrophoresis, Capillary / Q000295:instrumentation*; D046209:Electrophoresis, Microchip / Q000295:instrumentation*; D046208:Microchip Analytical Procedures; D038761:Photobleaching