Lab-on-a-chip: A Road Map of Silicon Chemistry to Multipurpose Microfluidic Chips

Abstract

Microfluidics addresses the behavior, control, and manipulation of a small amount of fluids (10−6 to 10−12 L) through channels and wells. This interdisciplinary field comprises different applications in drug development, biosensors, environmental monitoring, micro-mixing, single-cell analysis, automated synthesis of nanoparticles, or Janus fibres, point-of-care testing, organ-on-a-chip, lab-on-a-chip, and more. Lab-on-a-chip devices can manage tiny fluid volumes, less than microliters, as they employ microfluidic channels and chambers to achieve automation and high-throughput screening in some applications, such as in vitro diagnostics. The success of microfluidic chip fabrication is mainly attributed to material research, which studies material properties such as transparency, biocompatibility, flexibility, gas permeability, cost, wettability, surface derivatization, manufacturing with high fidelity and simplicity, mechanical properties, and solvent compatibility to achieve the required functionality of the microfluidic chips. There are two sections in this chapter. The first section describes microfluidics, its multipurpose applications, and its evolution on a chip. The second part explains several available microfluidic chip fabrication materials, including glasses, polymers, papers, ceramics, hydrogels, and hybrids, and their application-oriented pros and cons. This section concludes with a description of silicon-based materials and their application in microfluidic chips, with examples.