Superhydrophilic/Superhydrophobic Droplet Microarrays of Low Surface Tension Biofluids for Nucleic Acid Detection

Mohammad Awashra*, Pinja Elomaa, Tuomas Ojalehto, Päivi Saavalainen, Ville Jokinen*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)
36 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Superhydrophilic/superhydrophobic patterned surfaces can be used to create droplet microarrays. A specific challenge with the liquids needed for various biomedical applications, as compared to pure water, is their lower surface tension and potential for contaminating the surfaces through adsorption. Here, a method is shown to create biofluid droplet microarrays using discontinuous dewetting of pure water, an oil protective layer, and finally biofluid exchange with the water droplet array. With this method, a droplet array of a viscous nucleic acid amplification solution can be formed with a low surface tension of 34 mN m−1 and a contact angle of only 76° with the used hydrophobic coating. This droplet array is applied for nucleic acid detection of SARS-CoV-2 virus using strand invasion-based amplification (SIBA) technology. It is shown that by using an array of 10 000 droplets of 50 µm diameter the limit of detection is 1 RNA copy µL−1. The results demonstrate that SIBA on droplet microarrays may be a quantitative technology.

Original languageEnglish
Article number2300596
Number of pages9
JournalAdvanced Materials Interfaces
Volume11
Issue number1
Early online date23 Oct 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 4 Jan 2024
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

  • biofluids
  • black silicon
  • digital nucleic acid amplification
  • microfluidics
  • wettability patterning

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