Micro- and nanofluidic devices for environmental and biomedical applications

Abstract

During the last decade, an increasing amount of pocket-size chemistry equipment based on the so-called “lab-on-a-chip” approach has become available. Besides the popular application in the analysis of biological macromolecules, such chips in combination with portable electronic equipment are applicable in, for example, “point-of-care” ion analysis of body fluids, forensics, identification of explosives, tracking of pollution in environmental or waste waters, monitoring nutrients in agricultural or horticultural water, controlling quality in food production or process control in chemical industry. This paper discusses the development of a number of demonstrator chips and microsystems with applications in some of these fields. In particular, an integrated microsystem for flow injection analysis of ammonia in surface waters, a hydrodynamic chromatography chip for the analysis of particles and polymer molecules and a chip for ion analysis in blood are discussed in detail. The last chip may also find applications in environmental analysis.

Keywords:

• Microfluidics
• Nanofluidics
• Silicon micromachining
• Capillary ion analysis
• Hydrodynamic chromatography
• Flow injection analysis

Acknowledgements

Theo Veenstra, Roald Tiggelaar, Marko Blom, Elwin Vrouwe, Regina Luttge, Erwin Berenschot, Meint de Boer and Bert Otter, all of the University of Twente, and Emil Chmela and Rob Tijssen of the University of Amsterdam are thanked for their contributions to the research on which this review paper is based. Part of this work was financially supported by the Dutch Technology Foundation STW.