Keywords: biofluidics, microfluidics
In the biotechnology science, microfluidics is constantly adapting to the goals of biologists. Once a precise goal has been identified, biotechnology is searching for the best approaches to meet the demand of biologists. These approaches encompass different scientific domains, such as microfluidics—for transporting the targets, materials—for the fabrication of the chips, and chemistry—for the functionalization (Fig.1). Microfluidic solutions have considerably evolved along the years: at first, a downscaling approach from macroscale to microscale has been followed leading to the so-called microflows lab-chips where microflows are circulating in confined microchannels at the downscaled image of macroscopic networks. This approach was first motivated by genomics and the need for DNA recognition. As the goals of biologists diversified and progressively turned to protein recognition and cell culture and/or analysis, new microfluidic solutions have been developed. Progressively a large panel of solutions has emerged, which depart from the mere downscaling approach (Fig.2).
Journal: TechConnect Briefs
Volume: 2, Nanotechnology 2013: Electronics, Devices, Fabrication, MEMS, Fluidics and Computational (Volume 2)
Published: May 12, 2013
Pages: 342 - 345
Industry sector: Sensors, MEMS, Electronics
Topic: Modeling & Simulation of Microsystems
ISBN: 978-1-4822-0584-8