Determination of the Empirical Electrokinetic Equilibrium Condition of Microorganisms in Microfluidic Devices

Biosensors

BlancaH. Lapizco-Encinas¹  Adriana Coll De Peña¹  Nicole Hill¹ 

[1] Microscale Bioseparations Laboratory and Biomedical Engineering Department, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY 14623, USA;

关键词: electrokinetics;    bacteriophages;    electrophoresis;    microfluidics;    microorganisms;   

DOI  :  10.3390/bios10100148

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The increased concern regarding emerging pathogens and antibiotic resistance has drawn interest in the development of rapid and robust microfluidic techniques to analyze microorganisms. The novel parameter known as the electrokinetic equilibrium condition ($E_{EEC}$) was presented in recent studies, providing an approach to analyze microparticles in microchannels employing unique electrokinetic (EK) signatures. While the $E_{EEC}$ shows great promise, current estimation approaches can be time-consuming or heavily user-dependent for accurate values. The present contribution aims to analyze existing approaches for estimating this parameter and modify the process into an accurate yet simple technique for estimating the EK behavior of microorganisms in insulator-based microfluidic devices. The technique presented here yields the parameter called the empirical electrokinetic equilibrium condition ($e{E}_{EEC}$) which works well as a value for initial approximations of trapping conditions in insulator-based EK (iEK) microfluidic systems. A total of six types of microorganisms were analyzed in this study (three bacteria and three bacteriophages). The proposed approach estimated $e{E}_{EEC}$ values employing images of trapped microorganisms, yielding high reproducibility (SD 5.0–8.8%). Furthermore, stable trapping voltages (sTVs) were estimated from $e{E}_{EEC}$ values for distinct channel designs to test that this parameter is system-independent and good agreement was obtained when comparing estimated sTVs vs. experimental values (SD 0.3–19.6%). The encouraging results from this work were used to generate an EK library of data, available on our laboratory website. The data in this library can be used to design tailored iEK microfluidic devices for the analysis of microorganisms.

【 授权许可】

Unknown