Development of functional lab-on-a-chip on polymer for point-of-care testing of metabolic parameters

This paper presents the development of an easy-to-handle and disposable clinical diagnostic lab-on-a-chip using fully integrated plastic microfluidic components, which has the sampling/identifying capability to make fast and reliable measurements of metabolic parameters from human whole blood. A smart and functional lab-on-a-chip cartridge, which incorporates a full on-chip auto-calibration function for in the field applications, has been developed, and then fully characterized using a portable analyzer (3 ¼″ × 5″ × 1″) with multi-analyte detection capability. In addition, several new approaches in realizing smart and functional lab-on-a-chips on polymer have been adopted, which include the pinch valve for automatic fluidic sealing, a by-pass channel as the sampling indicator, and a robust connector design for long analyzer lifetimes. Metabolic parameters such as glucose, lactate, and partial oxygen from human whole blood have been successfully measured using the functional polymer lab-on-a-chips and the portable analyzer developed in this work.