Heater dedicated for Lab-on-a-chip systems

The authors report a new construction of a heater, which can be applied in Lab-on-a-chip systems. The heater was fabricated on a ceramic plate as a solid support. A commercially available paste DuPont 5091D with positive temperature coefficient (PTC) was used as a resistive material. Next, metallic conductors were created using gold sputtering in argon enhanced plasma environment. Finally, the gold layers were bonded with connection wires. The developed heater can be integrated with microsystems dedicated for bioanalysis, enzymatic reactions and cell cultures.