Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment
School of Advanced Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering
School of Advanced Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering
Thesis Abstract
Microarray technology has been developed to aid genetic studies in various fields such as zoology, botany and medical sciences. In a single microarray experiment, researchers by using five major steps namely biological question, sample preparation, microarray reaction, microarray detection and data analysis estimate the expression profile of thousands of genes experiment for diagnosing the behaviour of entire biological system. This technology still has limitations such as the deficiency of signal intensities in detection step and the reagent contamination in sample preparation step that might hamper the experimental process. Also, the multistage sample preparation in the microarray experiment is time-consuming and delays the progress of experiments. Although microfluidics technology which integrates all sample preparation approaches into a single device has been introduced to increase the efficiency of the sample preparation for microarray experiments, a real-time monitoring system is not available to confirm the completion of sample preparation. The reaction step of the microarray experiment also has the same requirement to monitor progress. To address the limitations associated with the existing microarray technology, an innovative optofluidic system which integrates microfluidics and optical detection into a monolithic device contains several advantages including high sensitivity, simple configuration and label free detection will be developed in this study to ensure the completion of the sample preparation and to achieve real-time monitoring for the whole microarray experiment procedures. With high flexibility, this innovative optofluidic system is compatible with existing microarray procedures. By utilizing this optofluidic system, experimental time will be less and the result will be more accurate. In addition, the innovative optofluidic system can also be applied to monitoring the process of microfluidics in other biomedical or chemical applications.
