Integrated Microfluidic Systems

摘要

Microfluidic systems use networks of channels thinner than a human hair to manipulate nanoliter volumes of reagents. The goal of microfluidics is challenging: to integrate, on a chip smaller than a credit card, all operations normally performed in a chemical or medical laboratory. Synthesis, purification, analysis, and diagnostics would be performed by such a "lab on a chip" rapidly, economically, and with minute volumes of samples. This scale-down approach is inspired by, and often compared to, the success of the miniaturization in the computer industry, namely, the miniaturization and integration of thousands of transistors on a silicon chip that has led to a rapid increase in performance and decrease in the cost of computers. This highlight describes two significant steps towards these ambitious goals.