Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

A Pdms Sample Pretreatment Device For The Optimization Of Electrokinetic Manipulations Of Blood Serum, Timothy J. Abram

Master's Theses

This project encompasses the design of a pretreatment protocol for blood serum and adaption of that protocol to a microfluidic environment in order to optimize key sample characteristics, namely pH, conductivity, and viscosity, to enable on-chip electrokinetic separations. The two major parts of this project include (1) designing a pretreatment protocol to optimize key parameters of the sample solution within a target range and (2) designing /fabricating a microchip that will effectively combine the sample solution with the appropriate buffers to replicate the same bench-scale protocol on the micro-scale.

Biomarker detection in complex samples such as blood necessitates appropriate sample …