Construction of a General Platform for Capillary Electrophoresis

This chapter describes the construction of an on-chip platform for capillary electrophoresis. The platform was consisted of two parts: on-chip part, mainly referring to the glass chip for electrophoresis, with on-chip t sieving matrix and several reagents like buffer, coating solutions; and off-chip part, the instrument including optical system for detection, electronic system for controlling of all actuators and mechanical system for optical adjustment. A software programmed by LabView platform was used for whole process control of electrophoresis detection. The operation process of the system will be introduced along with the software. The constructed platform will be verified by on-chip electrophoresis of forensic STR analysis. The test results shows high consistency compared with the ones run on tradition ABI platform while this on-chip platform has a much more compact dimension of only 310 × 310 × 122 mm3. The chapter will introduce all the function components of the instrument, the design and fabrication of glass capillary electrophoresis chip, and the verification of the whole system.