Themed collection Lab on a Chip HOT Articles 2022

We present the current status, challenges, and future opportunities of inertial microfluidics.

Single-use, disposable, point-of-care diagnostic devices carry great promise for global health, but present some challenges in terms of environmental sustainability. This perspective covers solutions to embed sustainability at the R&D and product development stages.

Current applications of radiotherapy on-a-chip in radiation physics and radiobiology and perspectives in translational radiobiology for cancer treatment.

This perspective provides an overview of microfluidics for fertility efforts with a particular focus on clinical applications and commercialization.

Polymer chemistry can direct the fusion of biological cells and functional materials. This review introduces the recent progress in polymer-directed engineering of advanced cell-based biocomposites with augmented functionality.

Electric fields in in vitro processing of gametes and embryos: dielectrophoresis (DEP) and electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD).

A review-tutorial focusing on applications and theory behind hydrodynamic confinements (HFCs) across flow regimes and geometries – in closed channels, between parallel plates and in open volume. A further focus on chemical reactions enabled by HFCs.

This comprehensive review covers current methods used for biofilm detection in clinical and laboratory settings and noninvasive portable technologies for direct and indirect detection of biofilm growth and monitoring at the point of care.

This critical review presents flow lithography-based particle fabrication methods, describes fundamental physicochemical concepts, discusses applications of particles and highlights potential future research directions.

This article reviews the fundamentals of the optoelectrowetting (OEW) technology, discusses its research progress, limitations, technological innovations, and finally introduces its emergence as portable smartphone-integrated environmental sensors.

This review summarizes recent advances of the integration between BBB-on-a-chip (μBBB) technology and brain disease modeling. It provides a guideline to extend their applications in pathological research, drug development, and personalized medicine.

In this paper, we summarized the recent advances in cell specific EV isolation, engineering and their potential applications in immune-oncology along with suggested areas of study necessary to bring EVs into clinical practice.

In this review article, we surveyed the applications of machine learning in microfluidic design and microfluidic control.

This review provides an overview of liver organ-on-chip (OoC) technology, including the general concept, different approaches and recent advances. A particular focus is given to the use of liver OoC in toxicity studies and risk assessment.

With the continuous development in nanoscience and nanotechnology, analytical techniques like surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) render structural and chemical information of a variety of analyte molecules in ultra-low concentration.

A microfluidic platform for solid-state quantum sensing, enabling the measurement of various physical quantities for lab-on-a-chip applications.

A simple, portable, and low-cost microfluidic system-funnel adapted sensing tube (FAST) is developed as an integrated, power-free, and pipette-free biosensor for viral nucleic acids.

A dual-function microneedle array was developed to co-delivery photosensitizers and light for photodynamic therapy.

Valving mechanism based on electroosmotic-flow bursting of a hydrophobic barrier to enable the performance of multi-step assays on paper-based devices.

We present a simple method for manufacturing a functional acoustic device for biomanipulation. This method utilizes laser cutting to achieve high efficiency for rapid prototyping.

Severe non-healing infections are often caused by multiple pathogens or by genetic variants of the same pathogen exhibiting different levels of antibiotic resistance.

Droplet splitting by exploiting tailored surface wettability is emerging as an important pathway to creating ultralow volumes of samples that can have applications in bioassays, tissue engineering, protein chips, and material synthesis.

A folding paper system was developed to mimic a tumor–vascular interface for the study of long-distance cell migration.

This paper presents a microfluidic device that can isolate extracellular vesicles (EVs) with multiple size intervals in a simple, effective, and automated manner.

The described microfluidic instrument performs real-time PCR (40 cycles) with comparable sensitivity to commercial instrumentation in under 10 minutes.

We present a low-cost microfluidic cartridge design scheme that combines gravity-driven passive microfluidic pumping with extraction-free amplification to achieve “sample-in, answer-out” point-of-care nucleic acid detection within 30 minutes.

In this study, we developed a microfluidic large-scale integration chip platform to automate longitudinal 3D cell culture studies. Proteome analysis of on chip cultured adipocytes under changing glucose conditions revealed metabolic stress profiles.

A parallel multistep digital analysis SlipChip for the parallel manipulation of a large number of droplets for digital biological analysis.

Microspheres array based intelligent nanoscope processed data collection for deep learning training. The trained convolutional neural network model classified the different sizes of nanoparticle samples.

The handheld, do-it-yourself ptychographic whole slide scanner for high-throughput digital pathology applications.

By using different customized microfluidic chips, a multifunctional rapid PCR platform allows fast screening of suspected cases within 15 min, followed by rapidly providing precise quantification of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

A reconfigurable microfluidic building block platform for high throughput drug screening.

A novel microfluidic system for the low-volume harvesting of extracellular vesicles from breast cancer tumor spheroids encapsulated within immobilized hydrogel microbioreactors for downstream single-vesicle analyses.

This on-chip device realizes large-area and predictable spin detection of fluorescent nanodiamonds, providing a scalable platform for quantum-sensor-based bioassay.

A microfluidic device is developed that uses the narrowband optical radiation of laser particle barcodes to sort tagged cells.

A cartridge-based, disposable magnetophoretic cytometer testing 3-part leukocyte differentials for point-of-care or self-testing applications.

Measured double emulsion droplet sizes across hundreds of flow rate and surfactant conditions parameterize core/shell volumes and droplet stability.

We present a portable, highly integrated platform that employs isothermal recombinase polymerase amplification and giant magnetoresistive nanosensors to perform multiplex SNP genotyping at the point-of-care.

An 8-shaped tripodal wheeled mobile robot utilizing liquid metal motors as the core driving part is proposed herein. This robot can achieve three types of driving functions on a two-dimensional plane via wireless control.

A high-performance micromixer based on rolling liquid marble.

Rheotaxis plays a crucial role in sperm navigation through the female reproductive tract. By mimicking the structure of the uterotubal junction, we provide a new method of sperm quality assessment.

A surface modified cotton-based biomedical matrix has been designed for the controlled in vitro 3D tumor expansion of captured cancer cells to investigate anti-cancer drug efficacy and multi-drug resistance (MDR) mechanisms.

A CMOS-MEA device combined with new impedance and electrochemical techniques measures cell attachment, growth/wound healing, cell–cell adhesion, metabolic state, and redox properties with single-cell spatial resolution for cell-biology applications.

Microfluidic polymeric blood vessel captures the adverse effects of SARS-CoV-2 on vasculature and enables identification of a therapeutic peptide that abolished virus induced cytokine storm orchestrated by the immune cells.

Integrated device for protein digestion, peptide separation and UV-detection on a femtoliter to picoliter volume based on micro/nanofluidics.

An acoustofluidic device based on oscillating bubbles was designed to rapidly pair and fuse cells with no limitation of cell size. The cell pairing rate reached 90% within 40 ms and fused cells kept biological functions.

A cell pairing method is developed to monitor immunological synapses formed by single cells with different sizes.

By simply applying a sample, the traffic light type μPAD enables highly intuitive equipment-free naked-eye readout with no need for calibration, subjective interpretation or calculation.

Using printed circuit board-based digital microfluidics, a point-of-care blood coagulation assay was developed to simultaneously assess the clotting tendency and the stiffness of the resultant blood clot.

We present a new bubble-enhanced microfluidic approach for highly efficient DNA fragmentation, suitable for next generation sequencing platforms. Improved on-chip performance arises from acoustic streaming generated by oscillating bubble interfaces.

This work describes a 3D printed dynamic gravity pump for studying the response of mechanoresponsive cells expressing Piezo1 ion channels under transient flows.

A deformation-free and mass-producible plastic spiral inertial microfluidic device was developed, which provides continuous, clogging-free, and industry-level-throughput cell manipulation.