Characterization and Optimization of Isotachophoresis Parameters for Pacific Blue Succinimidyl Ester Dye on a PDMS Microfluidic Chip

Isotachophoresis (ITP) for Pacific Blue (PB) dye using a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic chip is developed and characterized by determining the types and concentrations of electrolytes, the ITP duration, and the electric field density. Among candidate buffers for the trailing electrolyte (TE) and leading electrolyte (LE), 40 mM borate buffer (pH 9) and 200 mM trisaminomethane hydrochloride (Tris-HCl) (pH 8) were selected to obtain the maximum preconcentration and resolution of the PB bands, respectively. With the selected TE and LE buffers, further optimization was performed to determine the electric field (EF) density and the ITP duration. These ITP parameters showed a 20–170,000 preconcentration ratio from initial PB concentrations of 10 nM–100 fM. Further demonstration was implemented to preconcentrate PB-conjugated lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) using the PDMS microfluidic chip. By utilizing the quenching nature of PB-LDH conjugation, we were able to identify concentrations of LDH as low as 10 ng/mL. This simple PDMS microfluidic chip-based ITP for PB preconcentration enables highly sensitive biological and chemical analyses by coupling with various downstream detection systems.