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State-of-the-Art Lab-on-a-Chip Technology

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Dear Colleagues,

Lab-on-a-chip (LOC) platforms that started to appear in the 1990s in various university labs have matured in the last 15 years to become inexpensive commercial microfluidic platforms that have revolutionized the fields of point-of-care medical diagnostics and other rapid in-field testing for a variety of applications from chemical and biological warfare detection to environmental monitoring. Other cutting-edge LOC platforms have been developed for scalable drug development and testing, genomic and proteomic analysis, stem cell research, chemical synthesis, and a wide range of other applications. The use of inexpensive materials (such as plastics and paper) and accessible fabrication techniques (such as soft lithography) made microfluidic LOC platforms readily accessible for many academic researchers and commercial users and resulted in the recent proliferation of various LOC applications.

Researchers from academic fields and industries worldwide are encouraged to submit high-quality unpublished original research articles and review articles in the areas of microfluidics, micro- and nano-manufacturing, and applications that are directly relevant to lab-on-chip systems.

Dr. Lawrence Kulinsky
Guest Editor

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Keywords

microfluidic/nanofluidic devices
lab on a chip
μ-TAS
microfluidics
micro/nano devices for chemical, biological, and medical applications
micro- and nano-fabrication

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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12 pages, 2182 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Integrating Bio-Sensing Array with Blood Plasma Separation on a Centrifugal Platform

by Snehan Peshin, Marc Madou and Lawrence Kulinsky

Sensors 2023, 23(3), 1710; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23031710 - 03 Feb 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1670

Abstract

Numerous immunoassays have been successfully integrated on disc-based centrifugal platforms (CDs) over the last 20 years. These CD devices can be used as portable point-of-care (POC) platforms with sample-to-answer capabilities where bodily fluids such as whole blood can be used as samples directly without pre-processing. In order to use whole blood as a sample on CDs, centrifugation is used to separate red blood cells from plasma on CDs. There are several techniques for using specific fluidic patterns in the centrifugal fluidic network, such as reciprocation, that enhances the sensitivity of the immunoassays, including those using microarray antigen membranes. Present work demonstrates, for the first time, simultaneous integration of blood plasma separation (BPS) and reciprocation on the CD platform. The integrated design allows plasma that is separated from the red blood cells in a sedimentation chamber to flow into the reciprocation chamber via a narrow connecting channel of 0.5 mm × 0.5 mm cross-section. Due to the small cross-section of the connecting channel, there is no inflow of the red blood cell into the reciprocation chamber during subsequent fluidic operations of the CD. While no inflow of the red blood cells into the reciprocation chamber was observed, the conditions of 20 g jerk acceleration were also simulated in ANSYS finite element analysis software, and it was found that the CD design that was used is capable of retaining red blood cells in the sedimentation chamber. Experimentally, the isolation of red blood cells in the sedimentation chamber was confirmed using the ImageJ image processor to detect the visible color-based separation of the plasma from the blood. A fluorescent analyte testing on the bio-sensing array of the presented novel integrated design and on the standard reciprocation design CD was conducted for 7 min of reciprocation in each case. The test analyte was Europium Streptavidin Polystyrene analyte (10⁻³ mg/mL) and the microarray consisted of Biotin bovine serum albumin (BSA) dots. The fluorescent signals for the standard and integrated designs were nearly identical (within the margin of error) for the first several minutes of reciprocation, but the fluorescent signal for the integrated design was significantly higher when the reciprocation time was increased to 7 min. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art Lab-on-a-Chip Technology)

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Review

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36 pages, 8224 KiB

Open AccessReview

Microvalves for Applications in Centrifugal Microfluidics

by Snehan Peshin, Marc Madou and Lawrence Kulinsky

Sensors 2022, 22(22), 8955; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22228955 - 18 Nov 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2624

Abstract

Centrifugal microfluidic platforms (CDs) have opened new possibilities for inexpensive point-of-care (POC) diagnostics. They are now widely used in applications requiring polymerase chain reaction steps, blood plasma separation, serial dilutions, and many other diagnostic processes. CD microfluidic devices allow a variety of complex processes to transfer onto the small disc platform that previously were carried out by individual expensive laboratory equipment requiring trained personnel. The portability, ease of operation, integration, and robustness of the CD fluidic platforms requires simple, reliable, and scalable designs to control the flow of fluids. Valves play a vital role in opening/closing of microfluidic channels to enable a precise control of the flow of fluids on a centrifugal platform. Valving systems are also critical in isolating chambers from the rest of a fluidic network at required times, in effectively directing the reagents to the target location, in serial dilutions, and in integration of multiple other processes on a single CD. In this paper, we review the various available fluidic valving systems, discuss their working principles, and evaluate their compatibility with CD fluidic platforms. We categorize the presented valving systems into either “active”, “passive”, or “hybrid”—based on their actuation mechanism that can be mechanical, thermal, hydrophobic/hydrophilic, solubility-based, phase-change, and others. Important topics such as their actuation mechanism, governing physics, variability of performance, necessary disc spin rate for valve actuation, valve response time, and other parameters are discussed. The applicability of some types of valves for specialized functions such as reagent storage, flow control, and other applications is summarized. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art Lab-on-a-Chip Technology)

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