A review of digital microfluidics as portable platforms for lab-on a-chip applications
Following the development of microfluidic systems, there has been a high tendency towards developing lab-on-a-chip devices for biochemical applications. A great deal of effort has been devoted to improve and advance these devices with the goal of performing complete sets of biochemical assays on the...
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| Published in | Lab on a chip Vol. 16; no. 13; pp. 2376 - 2396 |
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| Main Authors | , , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
England
01.01.2016
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| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Following the development of microfluidic systems, there has been a high tendency towards developing lab-on-a-chip devices for biochemical applications. A great deal of effort has been devoted to improve and advance these devices with the goal of performing complete sets of biochemical assays on the device and possibly developing portable platforms for point of care applications. Among the different microfluidic systems used for such a purpose, digital microfluidics (DMF) shows high flexibility and capability of performing multiplex and parallel biochemical operations, and hence, has been considered as a suitable candidate for lab-on-a-chip applications. In this review, we discuss the most recent advances in the DMF platforms, and evaluate the feasibility of developing multifunctional packages for performing complete sets of processes of biochemical assays, particularly for point-of-care applications. The progress in the development of DMF systems is reviewed from eight different aspects, including device fabrication, basic fluidic operations, automation, manipulation of biological samples, advanced operations, detection, biological applications, and finally, packaging and portability of the DMF devices. Success in developing the lab-on-a-chip DMF devices will be concluded based on the advances achieved in each of these aspects.
This review evaluates the possibility of developing portable digital microfluidic platforms for lab-on-a-chip applications. |
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| Bibliography: | Ehsan Samiei is a PhD candidate at the School of Engineering, The University of British Columbia, Canada. His PhD research focuses on the integration of nano-wire based label-free biosensors into digital microfluidic (DMF) platforms for lab-on-a-chip applications. His research involves design of such biosensors compatible with DMF, as well as studying the fluidic aspects of the platform. This includes precise sample preparation and manipulation in presence of the hydrophilic surface of the biosensor. Ehsan received his Master's and Bachelor's degrees in Mechanical Engineering from K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Iran in 2010 and Urmia University, Iran in 2007, respectively. Maryam Tabrizian is a Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies at the Faculty of Dentistry at McGill University. She is internationally renowned for her original research contributions to the field of Biomaterials, Biointerfaces, Biorecognition systems and Lab on-a-chip devices through her over 200 papers published in these fields. Mina Hoorfar is a Professor at the School of Engineering, The University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, since 2006. Prior to joining UBC, she held an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship at Case Western Research University, working in one of the earliest centres of fuel cell research. She received her PhD and MASc degrees in Mechanical Engineering from University of Toronto in 2005 and 2001, respectively, and her BSc from University of Tehran, Iran, in 1998. Her current research focuses on the development of portable devices for biomedical applications and the design and fabrication of biosensors for environmental and agricultural applications. ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-3 content type line 23 ObjectType-Review-1 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 |
| ISSN: | 1473-0197 1473-0189 |
| DOI: | 10.1039/c6lc00387g |