Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
pH Buffer
Protein pH Buffer
Water
Salt
Precip. 1
Precip.8
Precip. 3
Figure 6.1
Schematic view of a 96-well chip that automatically sets up 96 reagent condition solutions [24].
Transportation
pathways
Well electrode
Protein/reagent
droplets
Figure 6.2
Schematic top-view of four wells and the surrounding electrodes [24].
manually or by robotics, here reagent and protein droplets are automatically
transported along the pathways from their input loading ports to the wells.
The rest of the chip real estate is used for accommodating the reagent and
protein input wells. In addition to the protein reservoir that a user loads,
there are two additional reservoirs that the user can load. These additional
reservoirs can be loaded with any user-selected additives such as glycerol
or detergents. Additives can stabilize the proteins, and there are numerous
reports on the use of additives to improve the quality and size of protein
crystals [71]. As we gain a better understanding of scaling issues, we will
increase the number of wells on-chip as part of future work since space (real
estate) is available in the prototype design.
6.1.1 Pin-Constrained Chip Design
Next, we assign control pins to address the electrodes in the proposed design.
There are a total of 1284 electrodes in the chip, including electrodes in wells,
transportation pathways, and reservoirs.
