Development of an integrated capillary valve-based preconcentrator and surface-based immunoassay

Abstract

A new generation of integrated preconcentrator and immunoassay was developed. A novel, self-aligned method for patterning Nafion resin was developed and applied to create a preconcentrator. In a parallel effort, a surface-based immunoassay was developed and optimized for use with the preconcentrator. Experiments were carried out with R-phycoerythrin (R-PE) to characterize the performance of the integrated preconcentrator and immunoassay. The immunoassay originally has a detection limit of Ing/mL of R-PE in 1xPBS. When coupled to the preconcentrator, this limit has been improved to 0.Olng/mL, a roughly 100x improvement. Discussions of the differences between this and previous generations of concentrators are also presented in this thesis.