PMMA Microfluidic Chips Made by Hot Embossing/Bonding for Optimizing the Flow in Electrophoresis Separation

To improve the stability of electrophoresis separation by adding samples at one time, two PMMA microfluidic chips with different configurations were made by hot embossing/bonding method. The reason of bad peak repetition during continuous electrophoresis separation in the double-T microfluidic chip has been analyzed, and a Y-T combination structure has been put forward. Based on the result of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation, the cause of bad peak repetition was found, and it is that the buffer was pushed back to sample reservoir by the flow field. A fruitful method for achieving good peak repetition with a Y-T combination structure has been developed by our research group. The structure was optimized via the CFD simulation. A sequence electrophoresis separation experiment using vitamin B2 and borax buffer was successfully put into practice. Depending on laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) detection, the relative standard deviations (TRSD) of peak height were 5% (n=6).