Themed collection Lab on a Chip Review Articles 2023

Aaron R. Wheeler and Philippa Ross introduce the first Lab on a Chip Reviews issue.

We describe how lab-on-a-chip systems can help address challenges in: (I) carbon sequestration, (II) hydrogen storage, (III) geothermal energy extraction, (IV) bioenergy, (V) recovering critical materials, and (VI) water filtration and remediation.

We argue that the introduction of high-frequency, real-time biosensors into LoCs could be used to establish high-value feed-back control functionalities.

Nanoparticle systems are functional carriers that can be used in the cancer therapy field for the delivery of a variety of hydrophobic and/or hydrophilic drugs.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed the critical and expanding roles of testing.

Conventional gold electrode fabrication is too costly and laborious for implementation in low-resource settings (LRS). We review affordable, simple alternative fabrication methods, highlighting gold leaf electrodes, for LRS applications.

Will miniaturised flow reactors initiate a new paradigm for a more localized, safe and reliable chemical production to overcome current crises?

We comprehensively review state of the art in liver microphysiological systems, as well as relevant diseases, highlighting numerous engineering challenges and open questions in the field of hepatology.

We review innovations in digital protein detection that has greatly improved the sensitivity of immunoassays and their impact on biomedicine.

We provide a comprehensive review of the strategies for integrating separation and detection units in microfluidic assays for liquid biopsy.

This review discusses recent examples of labs-on-chip that use high-resolution, high-speed, and multifunctional electronic and photonic chips to expand the capabilities of conventional sample analysis.

This article covers exciting developments of recent microfluidics-based single-cell proteomics methods and their utilizations to tackle important biological questions for both basic and translational research.

This review introduces various in vitro and in vivo CTC enrichment technologies based on the characteristics of CTC and nanostructures and provides detailed information about the clinical applications of CTC.

Critical development of CRISPR-based diagnostics coupled with nucleic acid amplification and amplification-free techniques; various purposes of CRISPR diagnostics including determination, quantification, multiplexed and point-of-care diagnostics.

Representation of the influence of biological and nanoscale factors on protein corona conformation and function in a healthy versus a pathogenic biological environment.

Acoustofluidic applications in biosciences; acoustic biosensing; acoustic trigger as a functional mechanical stimulus; cell separation and sorting; therapeutics development and delivery; cell patterning and assembly for tissue engineering.

3D printed microfluidics is a rapidly developing field promising 3D devices, autonomous integration, multifunctional platforms, and novel applications. We review the recent progress in methodologies and applications for 3D printed microfluidics.

This graphic includes droplet generation methods, thermal cycle strategies, signal counting approaches, and the applications in the fields of single-cell analysis, disease diagnosis, bacteria detection, and virus detection.

Review work on the challenges of paper-based NAATs covering sample-to-answer procedures along with the three main types of clinical samples as well as broader operational, scale up, and regulatory aspects of device development and implementation.

This review focuses on recent microfluidic technologies for label-free blood cell separation, detection and coupling with machine learning approaches.

Microfluidics and NMR have their own specific features, and integration of the two approaches allows non-invasive and label-free analysis of biochemical samples.

Organoids/organs-on-a-chip contribute to mimicking intestinal surface topography, microenvironment, and various interactions, providing new frontiers of intestinal pathophysiological models.

Digital microfluidic (DMF) bioassays with the benefits of automation, addressability, integration and dynamic configuration ability for nucleic acids, proteins, immunoreaction and cell analysis are presented in this review.

In this review, we overview designs and applications of microfluidics-based human mini-brains for reconstituting CNS disorders and expanded model systems ranging from the CNS to CNS-connecting organ axes with future perspectives.

In this review, we summarize the recent progress in surface modification strategies for improving the sensitivity of immunoassays, including antifouling coatings to reduce background noise and nanostructured surfaces to amplify the signals.

Microcantilever-based platforms are presented as versatile lab-on-chip devices for advanced applications spanning from material characterization and environmental monitoring to energy.

This review summarizes the recent attractive developments in the application of magnetic and electromagnetic forces in micro-analytical systems.

This review provides an overview of recent advances in droplet microfluidics for the formation and manipulation of spheroids and organoids, as well as their downstream applications in high-throughput screening and tissue engineering.

This review summarizes state-of-the-art microneedle-based detection and sensing systems, highlighting the objective significance, sensing principles, systematic construction, and validation models of these microneedles.

The paper provides a comprehensive review on micro elastofluidic solutions for on-skin wearable devices.

This review covers the working mechanisms, recent progress and state-of-the-art applications of microrobots driven by optical and magnetic fields.

This review summarizes microwell array chip-based single-cell analysis of versatile biomolecules including nucleic acids, proteins and metabolites.

This review summarizes recent works of water-based energy harvesting systems of triboelectric energy and osmotic energy with operation scales ranging from miniature systems to large scale attempts.

We discuss the recent trends in integrating deep-learning (DL) and optofluidic imaging. A holistic understanding of them could incentivize DL-powered optofluidic imaging for advancing a wide range of novel applications in science and biomedicine.

We review recent advances in CRISPR-based nucleic acid detection using microfluidic devices and discuss the capabilities, limitations, and potential of this emerging technology.

This paper comprehensively studies the latest progress in microfluidic technology for submicron and nanoparticle manipulation by elaborating on the physics, device design, working mechanism and applications of microfluidic technologies.