A Calibration-Free, Noncontact, Disposable Liquid Dispensing Cartridge Featuring an Online Process Control

Abstract

We present a noncontact liquid dispenser that uses a disposable cartridge for the calibration-free dosage of diverse biochemical reagents from the nanoliter to the microliter range. The dispensing system combines the advantages of a positive displacement syringe pump (responsible for defining the aliquot’s volume with high accuracy) with a highly dynamic noncontact dispenser (providing kinetic energy to detach the liquid from the tip). The disposable, noncontact dispensing cartridge system renders elaborate washing procedures of tips obsolete. A noncontact sensor monitors the dispensing process to enable an online process control. To further increase confidence and reliability for particularly critical biomedical applications, an optional closed-loop control prevents malfunctions. The dispensing performance was characterized experimentally in the range of 0.25 to 10.0 µL using liquids of different rheological properties (viscosity 1.03–16.98 mPas, surface tension 30.49–70.83 mN/m) without adjusting or calibrating the actuation parameters. The precision ranged between a coefficient of variation of 0.5% and 5.3%, and the accuracy was below ±10%. The presented technology has the potential to contribute significantly to the improvement of biochemical liquid handling for laboratory automation in terms of usability, miniaturization, cost reduction, and safety.