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Effect of active mixing on capture efficiency in heterogeneous microfluidic immunosensor

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Abstract

The enhanced capture of the antigen (Ag) by the surface-immobilized antibodies (Ab) in heterogeneous microfluidic immunosensors lowers (improves) the detection limit thus facilitating the early disease detection. The efficient capture of the antigen is subjected to the interaction of the transport parameters, reaction parameters and the microfluidic system geometry. In the present work, the role of active mixing in facilitating the transport in flow-based heterogeneous immunosensor was studied, both numerically and experimentally. The experiments were performed with the capture of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) by anti-PSA and the results were validated using numerical simulations. The average Sherwood number (Sh) for the experiments and simulations was comparable. First, the effect of the nature of the flow on the capture efficiency was tested, which showed the enhancement in the antigen capture using active mixing. Further, studies of individual active mixing parameter (average velocity, frequency and amplitude) on analyte capture were conducted. The increase in average velocity (uavg) increases the antigen capture but the corresponding pressure drop also increases, and the figure of merit (FOM) attains a maximum at Re ~ 0.6. Similar behavior was observed with the increase of the frequency. The continuous increase in the frequency reduces the reaction time scale and decreases the analyte capture. The amplitude has the least effect on the antigen capture. The flow profiles were also seen and the temporal variation was compared at different flow conditions with micro-PIV. We also proposed two correlations utilizing the parameters—the average surface concentration (Cs,avg), the Reynolds number (Re) and the Strouhal number (St). The correlations indicate that the dependency coefficient for St is higher than Re, and signify the impact of vortex propagation (i.e., active mixing) on antigen capture.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India (Grant Number 2(4)/2014-PEGD (IPIIW)) is acknowledged. The use of the micro-PIV unit (supported by the FIST program of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India) in the PG Research Laboratory in the Department of Chemical Engineering is acknowledged. Also, the help of Dr. Satyendra Kumar with the processing of the antibody and antigen samples is acknowledged.

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  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India

    Shipra Verma & Siddhartha Panda

  2. Samtel Centre for Display Technologies, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India

    Shipra Verma & Siddhartha Panda

  3. National Centre for Flexible Electronics, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, UP, 208016, India

    Siddhartha Panda

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  1. Shipra Verma
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Verma, S., Panda, S. Effect of active mixing on capture efficiency in heterogeneous microfluidic immunosensor. Microfluid Nanofluid 24, 58 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-020-02364-0

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