Themed collection 2012 Lab on a Chip Emerging Investigators

This Lab on a Chip themed issue – an issue dedicated to the work of Emerging Investigators – sees miniaturisation bringing unprecedented control to chemistry, physics, biology and bioengineering.

Contributors to the 2012 Emerging Investigators issue of Lab on a Chip.

Here, we present a novel method for establishing in vivo-like inflammatory models in a microfluidic device and quantitatively measuring the three-dimensional transmigration of neutrophils during the inflammatory process.

We developed a simple and novel one-step approach to produce G/O/W emulsions with high gas volume fractions in a capillary microfluidic device. The thickness of the oil layer can be controlled easily by tuning the flow rates. We successfully used the G/O/W emulsions to prepared hollow microspheres with thin polymer shells.

We developed a microbioreactor providing time sequences of space-resolved gradients of multiple molecular factors in 3D cell culture settings, along with a versatile, high-throughput operation and imaging compatibility.

We introduce a microfluidic filtration approach to purify extracellular vesicles directly from whole blood rapidly and without using a centrifuge.

Digital logic circuits implemented by microfluidic valves and channels are used to control liquid metering, mixing, incubation, and wash procedures with minimal external controls.

We demonstrate an integrated system for rapid and automated generation of multiple, chemically distinct populations of ∼10³–10⁴ sub-nanoliter droplets.

We present a robust microfluidic platform for the stable generation of multiple chemical gradients simultaneously using in situ self-assembly of particles in microchannels.

Production of recoverable liquid metal (EGaIn) microspheres through microfluidic flow focusing is demonstrated and compared to a model water-in-oil system.

A photoelectrocatalytic microreactor inhibits electron/hole recombination, selectively controls the reaction pathways and brings out the synergistic effect of photocatalysis and electrocatalysis.

A mini-microscope was developed for in situ monitoring of cells by modifying off-the-shelf components of a commercial webcam.

A double spiral microfluidic platform allows for passive, label-free tumor cell enrichment from whole blood with improved throughput and efficiency.

We report the concept of electrofluidic circuits – electrical circuits that are constructed using ionic liquid-filled fluidic channels for pressure sensing with analog and digital operation functionalities.

We demonstrate a nanohole-based surface plasmon resonance imaging spectroscopy instrument capable of simultaneously extracting receptor–ligand binding kinetics and affinities from 50 parallel microfluidic channels in real time.

A sensor that was specific for RS-melagatran was fabricated, and the presence of 10 000-fold amounts of SR-melagatran did not interfere with the detection.

An agarose droplet-based microfluidic single-cell ePCR method has been developed for highly sensitive, specific and quantitative detection of single E. coli O157:H7 cells in the high background of 100 000 excess normal K12 cells.

Water disinfection byproducts (DBPs) are a class of chemicals that are produced when chemical disinfectants react with organic materials in untreated water.

In this paper, we demonstrate a novel rotary microsystem capable of highly simple, rapid and automatic influenza viral RNA purification.

We propose a robust droplet fusion and sorting method for two parallel trains of droplets that is relatively insensitive to frequency and phase mismatch.

Drug efflux activity in single bacterium was assessed in directly accessible femtoliter-droplet, and efflux-active single cell was collected and the harboured plasmid was analyzed.

A high-throughput integrated microfluidic device is developed for rapid measurement of gene expression in individual cells for genetic stability assessment.

This work reports a microfluidic concentrator array device confining bacterial cells in a controllable fashion for synthetic cell-to-cell communication assays.

Optical microplates provide a temporal light stimulus in each well of a standard 96-well plate, enabling high-throughput studies of light-driven bioprocesses, such as photosynthesis.

We report the design and fabrication of three-dimensional “overpass” microstructures at the junction of crossed microchannels for 3D microchips.