A micromachined integratable thermal reactor

Abstract

This paper presents a micromachined thermal reactor. The silicon substrate remains unheated because of the thermal isolation design during thermal cycling of the reaction chamber. The side-heating concept employed has significantly improved in-chamber temperature uniformity. Finite-element-analysis is carried out to optimise the thermal performance. Experimental results have proved that the thermal reactor can easily be integrated with other non-thermal components. Integration of the device with other components or modules of miniaturised total analysis systems (/spl mu/TAS) is very promising.