Abstract
The ability for low reagent consumption and minimum waste production in a miniaturised system has generated great interest in the green chemistry field. Herein, a microfluidic system for calcium assays using the arsenazo III method has been developed. The reaction between arsenazo III and calcium to form a blue-purple coloured complex is measured by an embedded miniature fibre optic spectrometer through absorbance increments at 650 nm. A linear range was obtained from 0.2 to 3 mg dL−1 with a detection limit of 0.138 mg dL−1 (S/N=3). The method exhibited good reproducibility based on low and high calcium tests with control serums, the within-run coefficient of variation (CVs) (4.10% and 3.91%), and the run-to-run CV (4.6%) were obtained. The carry-over effect of the method was also 1.98%, which is acceptable for the current system. When compared to a conventional spectrophotometric method, this portable, microfluidic method correlated highly when evaluating serum samples (r 2=0.985; n=15). This similarity suggests that our proposed system could be used for determining the amount of calcium in serum samples.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Carmeliet, G. et al. Disorders of calcium homeostasis. Best Pract. Res. Clin. Endoc. Metab. 17, 529–546 (2003).
David, B.E. & Robert, K.R. Disorders of bone. In TIETZ Fundamentals of Clinical Chemistry, 6th Edition, 711–733 (2008).
Themelis, D.G., Tzanavaras, P.D., Anthemidis, A.N. & Stratis, J.A. Direct, selective flow injection spectrophotometric determination of calcium in wines using methylthymol blue and an on-line cascade dilution system. Anal. Chim. Acta 402, 259–266 (1999).
Cohen, S.A. & Sideman, L. Modification of the ocresolphthalein complexone method for determining calcium. Clin. Chem. 25, 1519–1520 (1979).
Cowley, D.M., Mottram, B.M., Haling, N.B. & Sinton, T.J. Improved linearity of the calcium-cresolphthalein complexone reaction with sodium acetate. Clin. Chem. 32, 894–895 (1986).
Michaylova, V. & Ilkova, P. Photometric determination of micro amounts of calcium with arsenazo III. Anal. Chim. Acta 53, 194–198 (1971).
Morgan, B., Artiss, J. & Zak, B. Calcium determination in serum with stable alkaline Arsenazo III and triglyceride clearing. Clin. Chem. 39, 1608–1612 (1993).
Leary, N., Pembroke, A. & Duggan, P. Single stable reagent (Arsenazo III) for optically robust measurement of calcium in serum and plasma. Clin. Chem. 38, 904 (1992).
Armenta, S., Garrigues, S. & de la Guardia, M. Green Analytical Chemistry. Trac-Trends Anal. Chem. 27, 497–511 (2008).
Nguyen, T., Kim, M., Park, J. & Lee, N. An effective passive microfluidic mixer utilizing chaotic advection. Sens. Actuator B-Chem. 132, 172–181 (2008).
Ismagilov, R. et al. Pressure-driven laminar flow in tangential microchannels: an elastomeric microfluidic switch. Anal. Chem. 73, 4682–4687 (2001).
Kenis, P. et al. Fabrication inside microchannels using fluid flow. Accounts Chem. Res. 33, 841–847 (2000).
Hessel, V., Lwe, H. & Schnfeld, F. Micromixers-a review on passive and active mixing principles. Chem. Eng. Sci. 60, 2479–2501 (2005).
Nguyen, N. & Wu, Z. Micromixers-a review. J. Micromech. Microeng. 15, R1–R16 (2005).
Bhagat, A., Peterson, E. & Papautsky, I. A passive planar micromixer with obstructions for mixing at low Reynolds numbers. J. Micromech. Microeng. 17, 1017 (2007).
Bhagat, A. & Papautsky, I. Enhancing particle dispersion in a passive planar micromixer using rectangular obstacles. J. Micromech. Microeng. 18, 085005 (2008).
Songjaroen, T. et al. Portable microfluidic system for determination of urinary creatinine. Anal. Chim. Acta 647, 78–83 (2009).
Laiwattanapaisal, W. et al. On-chip immunoassay for determination of urinary albumin. Sensors 9, 10066–10079 (2009).
Lin, Y., Chung, Y. & Wu, C. Mixing enhancement of the passive microfluidic mixer with J-shaped baffles in the tee channel. Biomed. Microdevices 9, 215–221 (2007).
Malcik, N., Ferrance, J., Landers, J. & Caglar, P. The performance of a microchip-based fiber optic detection technique for the determination of Ca2+ ions in urine. Sens. Actuator B-Chem. 107, 24–31 (2005).
Caglar, P. et al. A microchip sensor for calcium determination. Anal. Bioanal. Chem. 386, 1303–1312 (2006).
Haeckel, R. Proposals for the description and measurement of carry-over effects in clinical chemistry. Pure Appl. Chem. 63, 301–306 (1991).
Hossain, S., Ansari, M. & Kim, K. Evaluation of the mixing performance of three passive micromixers. Chem. Eng. J. 150, 492–501 (2009).
Duffy, D.C., McDonald, J.C., Schueller, O.J.A. & Whitesides, G.M. Rapid prototyping of microfluidic systems in poly(dimethylsiloxane). Anal. Chem. 70, 4974–4984 (1998).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Boonyasit, Y., Maturos, T., Sappat, A. et al. Passive micromixer integration with a microfluidic chip for calcium assay based on the arsenazo III method. BioChip J 5, 1–7 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13206-011-5101-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13206-011-5101-8