1
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
1.1 OVERVIEW OF MICROFLUIDICS
1.1.1 BACKGROUND AND BRIEF DEVELOPMENT HISTORY
Microuidics refers to the science and technology of manipulating uids in microchannels [1].
Microuidics can be used to integrate basic operation units such as sample preparation, reaction,
separation, and detection in biological, chemical, and medical analysis processes onto a microme-
ter-scale chip to form miniaturized total analytical systems (µTAS) or Lab on a Chip to automate the
analysis process. Microuidics has the advantages of low cost, small volume, low sample and reagent
requirements, and fast reaction. It has been widely used in biomedicine, food safety, environmental
monitoring, and other application elds. Figure 1.1(a) shows a portable, disc-based, and fully auto-
mated enzyme-linked immuno-sorbent assay (ELISA) system [2]. Figure 1.1(b) shows the micro-
uidic chip for single circulating tumor cells (CTC) isolation and whole genomic amplication [3].
(a) (b)
Figure 1.1: Examples of microuidic chips: (a) a portable, disc-based, and fully automated en-
zyme-linked immuno-sorbent assay (ELISA) system [2], used with permission from the Royal Society
of Chemistry; and (b) a microuidic chip for single CTC isolation and whole genomic amplication
[3], used with permission from the Royal Society of Chemistry.
e concept of microuidic analysis systems was rst proposed by Manz and Widmer in
1990, emphasizing the “micro” and “total” aspects of the analysis system and the chip fabrication
methods based on MEMS technologies [4], and in 1992 the capillary electrophoresis experiment
was successfully implemented on the microchip [5].
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.