Patent ID: 8794831

Claim:
A microfluidic system comprising: a microfluidic chip having a first microchannel in thermal communication with a first resistance temperature detector incorporated into the microfluidic chip to heat and cool a fluid in the first microchannel; and a tunable temperature measurement circuit comprising: a source node maintained at a predetermined source voltage; a ground node maintained at a predetermined ground voltage; and a bridge circuit comprising: the first resistance temperature detector connected between the source node and a first measurement node, a first reference resistor connected between the first measurement node and the ground node, a potentiometer connected between the source node and a reference node, and a scaling resistor connected between the reference node and the ground node, wherein a resistance of the first reference resistor is adjusted based upon the resistance of the first resistance temperature detector to optimize a sensitivity of the first resistance temperature detector; and a first programmable gain instrumentation amplifier wherein a first input to the first programmable gain instrumentation amplifier is connected to the reference node, a second input to the first programmable gain instrumentation amplifier is connected to the first measurement node and the output of the first programmable gain instrumentation amplifier is representative of the temperature sensed by the first resistance temperature detector.