In the post-human-genome-project era, the development of molecular diagnostic techniques has advanced the frontiers of biomedical research. Nucleic-acid-based technology (NAT) plays an especially important role in molecular diagnosis. However, most research and clinical protocols still rely on the manual analysis of individual samples by skilled technicians which is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Recently, with advances in microfluidic designs, integrated micro total-analysis-systems have emerged to overcome the limitations of traditional detection assays. These microfluidic systems have the capability to rapidly perform experiments in parallel and with a high-throughput which allows a NAT analysis to be completed in a few hours or even a few minutes. These features have a significant beneficial influence on many aspects of traditional biological or biochemical research and this new technology is promising for improving molecular diagnosis. Thus, in the foreseeable future, microfluidic systems developed for molecular diagnosis using NAT will become an important tool in clinical diagnosis. One of the critical issues for NAT is nucleic acid amplification. In this review article, recent advances in nucleic acid amplification techniques using microfluidic systems will be reviewed. Different approaches for fast amplification of nucleic acids for molecular diagnosis will be highlighted.

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is a nucleic acid amplification technique that rapidly amplifies specific DNA molecules at high yield. In this study, a microfluidic droplet array chip was designed to execute the digital LAMP process. The novel device was capable of 1) creating emulsion droplets, 2) sorting them into a 30 × 8 droplet array, and 3) executing LAMP across the 240 trapped and separated droplets (with a volume of 0.22 nL) after only 40 min of reaction at 56 °C. Nucleic acids were accurately quantified across a dynamic range of 50 to 2.5 × 10 DNA copies per μL, and the limit of detection was a single DNA molecule. This is the first time that an arrayed emulsion droplet microfluidic device has been used for digital LAMP analysis. When compared to microwell digital nucleic acid amplification assays, this droplet array-based digital LAMP assay eliminates the constraint on the size of the digitized target, which was determined by the dimension of the microwells for its counterparts. Moreover, the capacity for hydrodynamic droplet trapping allows the chip to operate in a one-droplet-to-one-trap manner. This microfluidic chip may therefore become a promising device for digital LAMP-based diagnostics in the near future.

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This letter presents a novel active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) pixel circuit that uses amorphous indium-gallium-zinc oxide (a-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) with a bottom-gate structure to compensate for the threshold voltage shift of the TFT. An a-IGZO TFT driven AMOLED display (70 × 70 pixels) on a glass substrate is fabricated and its reliability is evaluated under electrical stress.Index Terms-Active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED), amorphous indium-gallium-zinc oxide (a-IGZO), thin-film transistor (TFT).

Two new n-type diimidazolylstilbenes as blue-fluorescent dopant materials are synthesized and characterized. Blue-fluorescent devices based on these two compounds as the dopants reveal outstanding external quantum efficiencies (EQEs) (current efficiencies) of 7.8% (10.4 cd A(-1) ) and 7.7% (7.9 cd A(-1) ) with Commission internationale de l'Eclairage (CIE) co-ordinates of (0.14, 0.15) and (0.15, 0.11).