Optimization and Evaluation of Polyethylene Glycol Diacrylate as a Nonadsorptive Polymeric Material for Microfluidics

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), commonly used in microfluidics, is susceptible to nonspecific adsorption of molecules and biological analytes, such as proteins. PDMS requires coating or chemical modification to overcome this problem. We optimized a single-monomer formulation of polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA), which upon polymerization to form polyPEGDA, provides reduced susceptibility to nonspecific protein adsorption, as well as better resistance to permeation of small molecules than PDMS. Furthermore, poly-PEGDA can be utilized as a substrate for microchip electrophoresis, demonstrating symmetrical peaks with good theoretical plate counts.