Glass based Polymerase Chain Reaction Device for DNA Amplification

Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is a biomedical technique for forensic laboratory sciences in which small amount of DNA is amplified through repeated thermal cycles. It has become a powerful technique for clinical, biological, medical, forensic and genetic analysis and other areas of life science. This process actively increases the quantity of DNA by repetition of three-step procedure i.e. denaturation, annealing and extension which are performed at 95 degrees C, 55 degrees C and 72 degrees C respectively. In this research, two different designs of PCR device are presented. The heat transfer and flow simulation studies are performed for both designs to ensure the proper functionality of the PCR device. The pressure drop computations and heater calculations are also performed and it is observed that pressure drop and heater power are lesser for the design with larger cross-sectional area. Further, ANSYS CFX 15 is used to perform Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations by varying the inlet velocity to calculate the residence time of fluid in PCR channel in order to attain efficient DNA amplification. The study provides a useful knowledge on the effect of variation in crossectional area on pressure drop, heater power requirement calculations and fluid residence time of PCR device.