System Integration - A Major Step toward Lab on a Chip

Abstract

Microfluidics holds great promise to revolutionize various areas of biological engineering, such as single cell analysis, environmental monitoring, regenerative medicine, and point-of-care diagnostics. Despite the fact that intensive efforts have been devoted into the field in the past decades, microfluidics has not yet been adopted widely. It is increasingly realized that an effective system integration strategy that is low cost and broadly applicable to various biological engineering situations is required to fully realize the potential of microfluidics. In this article, we review several promising system integration approaches for microfluidics and discuss their advantages, limitations, and applications. Future advancements of these microfluidic strategies will lead toward translational lab-on-a-chip systems for a wide spectrum of biological engineering applications.

Towards autonomous lab-on-a-chip devices for cell phone biosensing

“…This type of solution is not necessarily limited to a single parameter, such as has been demonstrated in modern paper fluidics (Sin et al, 2011;Yetisen et al, 2013;Martinez et al, 2008b;Osborn et al, 2010) (Figure 2f), and more advanced operations can also integrate switches and valves Marinez et al, 2010).…”

“…The principles for autonomous operations have been investigated independently of cell phone detection and entail the integration of multiple functions (Abgrall and Gué, 2007;Ahn et al, 2004;Qiu et al, 2009;Bharadwaj and Singh, 2013;Floiris et al, 2010;Sin et al, 2011). Figure 1 illustrates an idealized device with all the stages that would be necessary in an end-to-end disposable solution for cell phone readout.…”

A Novel Method of Constructing an Electroosmotic Micromixer with Double-Side Electrodes for Biotechnological Applications

“…(7,8) They are also defined as a labeling unit in immunoassays and immunomagnetic cell sorting (IMCS) systems. (9)(10)(11) Broadly speaking, these devices are categorized as either passive or active, depending on the mixing strategy that they employ. Specific channel geometry configurations are used in passive micromixers to increase the surface contact area between the mixing species.…”

Rapid, Low-Cost Prototyping of Centrifugal Microfluidic Devices for Effective Implementation of Various Microfluidic Components

“…These components are typically costly and complex [4,6]. The centrifugal microfluidic platform eliminates the need for these kinds of active elements, and gives the platform a competitive advantage over a number of existing microfluidic systems.…”

“…This potential accelerated route to market is complemented by the fact that centrifugal microfluidic systems are favourable as low-cost, high-throughput, and diverse solutions for achieving integrated microfluidic systems when compared with other microfluidic technologies [6].…”