Lillehoj, Peter B.2024-05-222024-05-222024-052024-04-11May 2024Utzinger, Benjamin. Finger-powered Microfluidic Mixer for Enhanced Electrochemical Detection of Protein Biomarkers. (2024). Masters thesis, Rice University. https://hdl.handle.net/1911/116165https://hdl.handle.net/1911/116165This thesis presents the development of a finger-actuated micromixer to enhance the performance of an electrochemical immunosensor. Numerical simulations were performed to optimize the design of the mixer and study the flow characteristics upon actuation of the mixer. Using the optimized mixer design, a microfluidic finger-actuated mixer was fabricated and experiments were performed to visualize the flows generated by the mixer. The mixer was integrated with an electrochemical immunosensor for measurements of chemokine (C-X-C motif) ligand 9, a protein biomarker for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, which was used for proof of principle. Experiments were performed to optimize the mixing and immunosensor parameters and to investigate the influence of the mixer on the immunosensor performance. Our results revealed that implementing mixing during the protein incubation steps accelerated biomolecular transport and enhanced antibody-antigen reactions, ultimately increasing the signal-to-background ratio and reducing the detection time. The ability to rapidly detect protein biomarkers with high sensitivity in a point‐of‐care format makes this device a promising tool for diagnostic testing.application/pdfengCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.MicrofluidicsPoint-Of-CareThesis2024-05-22