A Short Cut to the Lab-on-a-Chip Markets: The Microfluidic Construction Kit

摘要

Lab-on-a-chip devices (LOC) is a field in microsystem technology with bright prospects. A huge number of publications show a wide variety of simple or even complex systems which give an impression that many different applications could profit from this technology. But just a few of these systems turned a real world product in the past. High development and production cost were hold responsible for the situation. Furthermore, many potential users are not familiar with this technology which leads to a reservation. Nowadays, the production cost can be reduced by applying polymer chips manufactured by cost efficient micromolding technologies. But there is still a need to lower the development costs and to give an understanding of the technology to more potential users. Usually within the development phase different prototypes have to be made and tested to come step by step to the LOC- product which makes the development slow and expensive. We realized a new modular concept to build a complex fluidic system. Different standard components have been manufactured where each component represents a single process step or unit operation. These components can be connected to each other in different configurations to represent various fluidic layouts. Meanwhile, some of these components are commercially available as off the shelf products. Customers can use them to test their approximated fluidic layout with acceptable costs before going into the manufacturing of specific prototypes. The sales of components is growing driven by customers from industry as well as university institutes.