What is a Lab-On-A-Chip?
Lab-on-a-chip devices, more formally known as “Micro Total Analysis Systems” (µTAS) are microfluidics-based systems which integrate multiple laboratory-type capabilities on a single chip only a few centimeters in size. Among their uses are real-time polymerase chain reactions (used to amplify small DNA strands into more manageable samples), immunoassays, which diagnose diseases based on antigen/antibody presence, dielectrophoresis, used to detect certain cell types, and blood sample preparation, such as the extraction of DNA from red blood cells. Lab-on-a-chip devices could one day lead to a pinhead-sized implant or skin-mounted device able to almost instantly detect the presence of disease bacteria or biochemical agents in the bloodstream. In the future, doctors may be able to make diagnoses quickly and accurately using information transmitted from such a device. Lab-on-a-chip technology has been around since the 80s and even, in precursor form, the late 70s, but it wasn’t until the b
Lab-on-a-chip devices, which can be about the size of the SIM card in your cell phone, have been developed by engineers to perform micro-scale experiments. The advantage of such devices is that your entire experiment can be in one small place. My research advisor, Dr. Moses Noh, is a microfabrication specialist. He and his graduate and undergraduate students study microscale mechanics/fluidics phenomena and develop microsystems, biochips, and implantable devices for biomedical applications. CELL BIOLOGY MICROFABRICATION MICROFLUIDIC PLATFORM FOR CELL CULTURE LAB-ON-A-CHIP In particular, I worked with graduate student Jorge Capurro on developing designs for a cantilever device that will be used to study the properties of small (200nm- 2mm) particles suspended in fluid under the influence of an externally applied AC electric field. These particles are inserted inside a small microchannel fabricated using a process called photolithography. The photolithography process involves a series of
