MAGNETIC TAGGING TECHNIQUES

• Main Authors: LLANDRO, JUSTIN, MITRELIAS, ATHANASIOS, ZHELUDEV, NIKOLAY, KOPPER, KLAUS, PETER, BLAND, JAMES, ANTHONY, CHARLES, STEINMULLER, STEPHEN, VAN BELLE, FRIEDA, TRYPINIOTIS, THEODOSSIS
• Format: Patent
• Language: English; French; German
• Published: 20.08.2008
• Subjects: CALCULATING; CHEMICAL OR PHYSICAL LABORATORY APPARATUS FOR GENERAL USE; CHEMICAL OR PHYSICAL PROCESSES, e.g. CATALYSIS OR COLLOIDCHEMISTRY; COMPUTING; COUNTING; HANDLING RECORD CARRIERS; INVESTIGATING OR ANALYSING MATERIALS BY DETERMINING THEIRCHEMICAL OR PHYSICAL PROPERTIES; MANUFACTURE OR TREATMENT OF NANOSTRUCTURES; MEASUREMENT OR ANALYSIS OF NANOSTRUCTURES; MEASURING; NANOTECHNOLOGY; PERFORMING OPERATIONS; PHYSICAL OR CHEMICAL PROCESSES OR APPARATUS IN GENERAL; PHYSICS; POSTAL SORTING; PRESENTATION OF DATA; RECOGNITION OF DATA; RECORD CARRIERS; SEPARATING SOLIDS FROM SOLIDS; SORTING; SORTING INDIVIDUAL ARTICLES, OR BULK MATERIAL FIT TO BE SORTEDPIECE-MEAL, e.g. BY PICKING; SPECIFIC USES OR APPLICATIONS OF NANOSTRUCTURES; TESTING; THEIR RELEVANT APPARATUS; TRANSPORTING

This invention relates to microfluidic apparatus for reading, writing and sorting magnetic tags attached to chemical and biological molecules and other entities. We describe apparatus for separating chemical or biological molecules or moieties each individually attached to a MBM tag miniature multi-bit magnetic tag capable of adopting a plurality of remanent magnetic configurations corresponding to binary information, the apparatus comprising: at least one input for said tagged molecules or moieties; at least two outputs for said tagged molecules or moieties; a microfluidic flow channel incorporating: magnetic readers to read said binary information; magnetic writers to write said binary information; and a switch to direct said tagged molecules or moieties to a selected said output responsive to said binary information. The invention also relates to planar multibit magnetic tags suitable for use with such apparatus.