Interfacial stabilization of organic-aqueous two-phase microflows for a miniaturized DNA extraction module

Organic-aqueous liquid (phenol) extraction is one of many standard techniques to efficiently purify DNA directly from cells. The cell components naturally distribute themselves into the two fluid phases in order to minimize interaction energies of the biological components with the surrounding solvents. The membrane components and protein partition to the interface between the organic and aqueous phases while the DNA stays in the aqueous phase. The aqueous phase is then removed with a purified DNA sample. This work studies the first steps towards miniaturizing this liquid extraction technique in a microfluidic device. The first step is to understand how the two liquid phases behave in microchannels. Due to the interfacial tension between the two liquid phases, novel approaches must be examined in order to obtain interfacial stability under flow conditions. The stability of the organic-aqueous interface is improved by reducing the interfacial tension between the two phases by incorporating a surfactant into the aqueous phase. The variation of the interfacial tension as a function of surfactant concentration is also quantified in this work. This has led to the ability to create stable stratified microflows in both a dual inlet and three inlet microfluidic systems. Also, the first step in understanding biological interactions at the organic-aqueous interface is investigated using a fluorescently labeled bovine serum albumin protein.