Conventional bacteria identification assays typically require several hours for DNA amplification and hybridization, hours for antibody-antigen reaction, or even days for bacteria culture 1, 2, 3, 4.

Rapid separation, concentration and detection of pathogens in clinical diagnosis of bacteremia and sepsis infections have become increasingly important. aeruginosa that are found in most of the isolated infections in bacteremia were successfully identified in less than one minute on-chip without the use of any antibody/chemical immobilization and reaction processes. This electrokinetic approach performs isolation and concentration of bacteria in about three minutes the density factor is increased approximately a thousand fold in a local area of ~5000 Ојm 2 from a low bacteria concentration of 5 Г— 10 3вЂ…CFU/ml. Using a hybrid electrokinetic mechanism, bacteria can be concentrated at the stagnation area on the SERS-active roughened electrode, while blood cells were excluded away from this region at the center of concentric circular electrodes. This study reports a novel microfluidic platform for rapid and long-ranged concentration of rare-pathogen from human blood for subsequent on-chip surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) identification/discrimination of bacteria based on their detected fingerprints.

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