Microfluidics (Lecture 27)

Question 1

What is microfluidics?

Answer 1

Miniaturisation of chemical and biological experiments and processes.

Question 2

What is the aim of microfluidics?

Answer 2

The aim is to gain advantages in terms of heat transfer, reaction speed, analysis speed, types of data we can acquire, types of experiments we can perform etc.

Question 3

On what scales can microfluidic technologies manipulate and process liquids (and gases)?

Answer 3

on scales below 500 μm

Question 4

What does the choice of material affect?

Answer 4

• Chemistry or biology that can be done on the device.
• Cost.
• Fabrication complexity.
• Re-usability.

Question 5

What does the droplet toolkit consist of?

Answer 5

Droplet creation.
Dosing reagents.
Droplet incubation.
Droplet merging.
Droplet splitting.
Droplet dilution.
Droplet manipulation.
Etc.