An integrated CMOS high voltage supply for lab-on-a-chip systems

Electrophoresis is a mainstay of lab-on-a-chip (LOC) implementations of molecular biology procedures and is the basis of many medical diagnostics. High voltage (HV) power supplies are necessary in electrophoresis instruments and are a significant part of the overall system cost. This cost of instrumentation is a significant impediment to making LOC technologies more widely available. We believe one approach to overcoming this problem is to use microelectronic technology (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, CMOS) to generate and control the HV We present a CMOS-based chip (3 mm x 2.9 mm) that generates high voltages (hundreds of volts), switches HV outputs, and is powered by a 5 V input supply (total power of 28 mW) while being controlled using a standard computer serial interface. Microchip electrophoresis with laser induced fluorescence (LIF) detection is implemented using this HV CMOS chip. With the other advancements made in the LOC community (e.g. micro-fluidic and optical devices), these CMOS chips may ultimately enable 'true' LOC solutions where essentially all the microfluidics, photonics and electronics are on a single chip.