A fully disposable paper-based electrophoresis microchip with integrated pencil-drawn electrodes for contactless conductivity detection?

Analytical Methods Pub Date: 2016-08-10 DOI: 10.1039/C6AY01963C

Abstract

We describe for the first time the fabrication of a paper-based microchip electrophoresis (pME) device with integrated hand-drawn pencil electrodes to perform capacitively coupled contactless conductivity detection (C4D). This low-cost device (less than $0.10) revealed great capability to dissipate heat, good injection-to-injection repeatability, and ease of attaching pencil-drawn electrodes on the separation channel. The feasibility of the proposed pME-C4D device was successfully demonstrated with the separation of bovine serum albumin and creatinine within 150 s with baseline resolution. The limits of detection values for albumin and creatinine were 20 and 35 μmol L?1, respectively. These biomolecules present clinical relevance as evidence of kidney failure. The proposed pME-C4D offers great potential to be explored in the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus and heart disease.

Graphical abstract: A fully disposable paper-based electrophoresis microchip with integrated pencil-drawn electrodes for contactless conductivity detection
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