Ion concentration polarization-based multifunctional microfluidic device for analysis of intracellular components

We report a multifunctional microfluidic device that lyses cells and separates intracellular components (including proteins) as a novel cell analysis platform. The device exploits an amplified electric field in an ion-depletion region formed by a nanofluidic phenomenon termed ion concentration polarization (ICP). To enable the multifunctionality of the device, multiple electric streams were employed to generate multiple ICP zones where cell lysis and separation of nano-sized intracellular components were processed sequentially in a semi-continuous manner in a single device. The amplified electric field in the ion-depletion region provides a short processing time (within only a few seconds for each step), and the absence of the internal electrodes offers the advantages of simple, low-cost device fabrication and bubble-free operation compared with conventional electric-force-based microfluidic devices. Due to these unique features, we expect that the developed multifunctional microfluidic device can be a very useful tool as an integrated system for analyzing intracellular components such as DNAs and proteins which is still a challenging and important issue to the biochemist.