New-TechEurope Magazine | November 2017 | Digital Edition

Lab-on-a-Chip technology - a key enabler for life science and diagnostics Holger Becker, Claudia Gärtner – microfluidic ChipShop GmbH

Introduction As the microelectronic revolution changed the way how electronic components were manufactured 50 years ago, a similar development can be seen in the Life Sciences with the concept of the so-called “Lab-on-a-Chip” or microfluidics technology, which deals with the handling and manipulation of miniature amounts of liquids and was introduced almost 30 years ago [1]. After the number of scientific publications within the microfluidics area has dramatically increased between 2000 and 2010, the commercialization of microfluidics-enabled products has been picking up speed. We have seen the technology making a tremendous step from being a “technology looking for a problem” to a widely used truly enabling technology. Nowadays almost no product development in the field of diagnostics or analytical sciences takes place which does not involve elements with microfluidic functionality.

Several drivers behind the current commercial development can be named: Firstly, the fundamental scaling laws which favor miniaturization with mechanisms like diffusion and heat transport. This reduces overall time from the input of a sample to the analytical result to minutes rather than the hours or even days in larger systems. Secondly, the cost and the overall available volume of reagents in the Life Sciences is often a critical factor. By reducing these volumes, not only a cost reduction can be achieved but often this represents the only way of processing scarce material. Thirdly, many functional elements of biology, e.g. cells, blood vessels, bacteria etc. have a size which lies exactly in the range of microfabrication methods, making it an ideal fit between manufacturing technologies and applications. Fourthly, the very high geometrical accuracies of miniaturized systems together with the high

surface-to-volume ratio makes the environment in which the fluids are contained extremely well controlled. Last but not least, miniaturization offers the potential to automate many laborious laboratory processes which often include many manual steps like pipetting, sample transfer etc., again reducing the cost and time of the complete analytical process and reducing the risk of procedural error. These advantages have proven to be very attractive, first spurning the very large scientific activity in the field and increasingly also in form of commercial products. Functional integration One of the most important advances in recent years is the ability to transfer complex analytical or diagnostic processes onto a single microfluidics device. Figure 1 shows typical process steps which have to be realized during a

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