ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 18 -- United States Patent no. 12,325,876, issued on June 10, was assigned to Purdue Research Foundation (West Lafayette, Ind.).

"Electrostatic control of ionic environment in a droplet based platform for biological applications" was invented by Muhammad Ashraful Alam (West Lafayette, Ind.) and Piyush Dak (West Lafayette, Ind.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A process and device for electrostatically controlling an ionic environment in a droplet, such as in a droplet-based platform including polymerase-chain reaction (PCR) applications. The process includes providing a chip that comprises at least a pair of electrodes, placing a salt-containing droplet on the chip, and th...