The Experts below are selected from a list of 220443 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Michael C. Breadmore - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Comparing Microfluidic Performance of Three-Dimensional (3D) Printing Platforms
Analytical Chemistry, 2017Co-Authors: Niall P Macdonald, Petr Smejkal, Joan M Cabot, Brett Paull, Roseanne M Guijt, Michael C. BreadmoreAbstract:Three-dimensional (3D) printing has emerged as a potential revolutionary technology for the fabrication of microfluidic devices. A direct experimental comparison of the three 3D printing technologies dominating Microfluidics was conducted using a Y-junction microfluidic device, the design of which was optimized for each printer: fused deposition molding (FDM), Polyjet, and digital light processing stereolithography (DLP-SLA). Printer performance was evaluated in terms of feature size, accuracy, and suitability for mass manufacturing; laminar flow was studied to assess their suitability for Microfluidics. FDM was suitable for microfabrication with minimum features of 321 ± 5 μm, and rough surfaces of 10.97 μm. Microfluidic devices >500 μm, rapid mixing (71% ± 12% after 5 mm, 100 μL/min) was observed, indicating a strength in fabricating micromixers. Polyjet fabricated channels with a minimum size of 205 ± 13 μm, and a surface roughness of 0.99 μm. Compared with FDM, mixing decreased (27% ± 10%), but Polyje...
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3d printed microfluidic devices enablers and barriers
Lab on a Chip, 2016Co-Authors: Sidra Waheed, Joan M Cabot, Niall P Macdonald, Brett Paull, Roseanne M Guijt, T W Lewis, Michael C. BreadmoreAbstract:3D printing has the potential to significantly change the field of Microfluidics. The ability to fabricate a complete microfluidic device in a single step from a computer model has obvious attractions, but it is the ability to create truly three dimensional structures that will provide new microfluidic capability that is challenging, if not impossible to make with existing approaches. This critical review covers the current state of 3D printing for Microfluidics, focusing on the four most frequently used printing approaches: inkjet (i3DP), stereolithography (SLA), two photon polymerisation (2PP) and extrusion printing (focusing on fused deposition modeling). It discusses current achievements and limitations, and opportunities for advancement to reach 3D printing's full potential.
Yongjin Yoon - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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3d printed Microfluidics for biological applications
Lab on a Chip, 2015Co-Authors: Chee Meng Benjamin Ho, Sum Huan Ng, King Ho Holden Li, Yongjin YoonAbstract:The term “Lab-on-a-Chip,” is synonymous with describing microfluidic devices with biomedical applications. Even though Microfluidics have been developing rapidly over the past decade, the uptake rate in biological research has been slow. This could be due to the tedious process of fabricating a chip and the absence of a “killer application” that would outperform existing traditional methods. In recent years, three dimensional (3D) printing has been drawing much interest from the research community. It has the ability to make complex structures with high resolution. Moreover, the fast building time and ease of learning has simplified the fabrication process of microfluidic devices to a single step. This could possibly aid the field of Microfluidics in finding its “killer application” that will lead to its acceptance by researchers, especially in the biomedical field. In this paper, a review is carried out of how 3D printing helps to improve the fabrication of microfluidic devices, the 3D printing technologies currently used for fabrication and the future of 3D printing in the field of Microfluidics.
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3d printed Microfluidics for biological applications
Lab on a Chip, 2015Co-Authors: Yongjin YoonAbstract:The term “Lab-on-a-Chip,” is synonymous with describing microfluidic devices with biomedical applications. Even though Microfluidics have been developing rapidly over the past decade, the uptake rate in biological research has been slow. This could be due to the tedious process of fabricating a chip and the absence of a “killer application” that would outperform existing traditional methods. In recent years, three dimensional (3D) printing has been drawing much interest from the research community. It has the ability to make complex structures with high resolution. Moreover, the fast building time and ease of learning has simplified the fabrication process of microfluidic devices to a single step. This could possibly aid the field of Microfluidics in finding its “killer application” that will lead to its acceptance by researchers, especially in the biomedical field. In this paper, a review is carried out of how 3D printing helps to improve the fabrication of microfluidic devices, the 3D printing technologies currently used for fabrication and the future of 3D printing in the field of Microfluidics.
Yuanjin Zhao - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Colloidal Crystals from Microfluidics.
Small, 2019Co-Authors: Feika Bian, Lingyu Sun, Lijun Cai, Yu Wang, Yuetong Wang, Yuanjin ZhaoAbstract:: Colloidal crystals are of great interest to researchers because of their excellent optical properties and broad applications in barcodes, sensors, displays, drug delivery, and other fields. Therefore, the preparation of high quality colloidal crystals in large quantities with high speed is worth investigating. After decades of development, Microfluidics have been developed that provide new choices for many fields, especially for the generation of functional materials in microscale. Through the design of microfluidic chips, colloidal crystals can be prepared controllably with the advantages of fast speed and low cost. In this Review, research progress on colloidal crystals from Microfluidics is discussed. After summarizing the classifications, the generation of colloidal crystals from Microfluidics is discussed, including basic colloidal particles preparation, and their assembly inside or outside of microfluidic devices. Then, applications of the achieved colloidal crystals from Microfluidics are illustrated. Finally, the future development and prospects of microfluidic-based colloidal crystals are summarized.
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Design of capillary Microfluidics for spinning cell-laden microfibers
Nature Protocols, 2018Co-Authors: Yunru Yu, Jiahui Guo, Luoran Shang, Jie Wang, Yuanjin ZhaoAbstract:This protocol describes how to produce cell-laden microfibers using capillary microfluidic devices. The devices enable spinning of increasingly complex microfibers, which can function as building blocks for 3D cell culture and tissue engineering.AbstractThis protocol describes the design of capillary Microfluidics for spinning bioactive (cell-laden) microfibers for three-dimensional (3D) cell culture and tissue-engineering applications. We describe the assembly of three types of microfluidic systems: (i) simple injection capillary Microfluidics for the spinning of uniform microfibers; (ii) hierarchical injection capillary Microfluidics for the spinning of core–shell or spindle-knot structured microfibers; and (iii) multi-barrel injection capillary Microfluidics for the spinning of microfibers with multiple components. The diverse morphologies of these bioactive microfibers can be further assembled into higher-order structures that are similar to the hierarchical structures in tissues. Thus, by using different types of capillary microfluidic devices, diverse styles of microfibers with different bioactive encapsulation can be generated. These bioactive microfibers have potential applications in 3D cell culture, the mimicking of vascular structures, the creation of synthetic tissues, and so on. The whole protocol for device fabrication and microfiber spinning takes ~1 d.
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Design of capillary Microfluidics for spinning cell-laden microfibers.
Nature Protocols, 2018Co-Authors: Luoran Shang, Jiahui Guo, Jie Wang, Yuanjin ZhaoAbstract:This protocol describes the design of capillary Microfluidics for spinning bioactive (cell-laden) microfibers for three-dimensional (3D) cell culture and tissue-engineering applications. We describe the assembly of three types of microfluidic systems: (i) simple injection capillary Microfluidics for the spinning of uniform microfibers; (ii) hierarchical injection capillary Microfluidics for the spinning of core-shell or spindle-knot structured microfibers; and (iii) multi-barrel injection capillary Microfluidics for the spinning of microfibers with multiple components. The diverse morphologies of these bioactive microfibers can be further assembled into higher-order structures that are similar to the hierarchical structures in tissues. Thus, by using different types of capillary microfluidic devices, diverse styles of microfibers with different bioactive encapsulation can be generated. These bioactive microfibers have potential applications in 3D cell culture, the mimicking of vascular structures, the creation of synthetic tissues, and so on. The whole protocol for device fabrication and microfiber spinning takes ~1 d.
Nam-trung Nguyen - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Spheroids-on-a-chip: Recent advances and design considerations in microfluidic platforms for spheroid formation and culture
Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, 2018Co-Authors: Khashayar Moshksayan, Majid Ebrahimi Warkiani, Navid Kashaninejad, John G. Lock, Hajar Moghadas, Bahar Firoozabadi, Mohammad Said Saidi, Nam-trung NguyenAbstract:Abstract A cell spheroid is a three-dimensional (3D) aggregation of cells. Synthetic, in-vitro spheroids provide similar metabolism, proliferation, and species concentration gradients to those found in-vivo. For instance, cancer cell spheroids have been demonstrated to mimic in-vivo tumor microenvironments, and are thus suitable for in-vitro drug screening. The first part of this paper discusses the latest microfluidic designs for spheroid formation and culture, comparing their strategies and efficacy. The most recent microfluidic techniques for spheroid formation utilize emulsion, microwells, U-shaped microstructures, or digital Microfluidics. The engineering aspects underpinning spheroid formation in these microfluidic devices are therefore considered. In the second part of this paper, design considerations for microfluidic spheroid formation chips and microfluidic spheroid culture chips (μSFCs and μSCCs) are evaluated with regard to key parameters affecting spheroid formation, including shear stress, spheroid diameter, culture medium delivery and flow rate. This review is intended to benefit the Microfluidics community by contributing to improved design and engineering of microfluidic chips capable of forming and/or culturing three-dimensional cell spheroids.
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Magnetic digital Microfluidics – a review
Lab on a chip, 2017Co-Authors: Yi Zhang, Nam-trung NguyenAbstract:A digital microfluidic platform manipulates droplets on an open surface. Magnetic digital Microfluidics utilizes magnetic forces for actuation and offers unique advantages compared to other digital microfluidic platforms. First, the magnetic particles used in magnetic digital Microfluidics have multiple functions. In addition to serving as actuators, they also provide a functional solid substrate for molecule binding, which enables a wide range of applications in molecular diagnostics and immunodiagnostics. Second, magnetic digital Microfluidics can be manually operated in a “power-free” manner, which allows for operation in low-resource environments for point-of-care diagnostics where even batteries are considered a luxury item. This review covers research areas related to magnetic digital Microfluidics. This paper first summarizes the current development of magnetic digital Microfluidics. Various methods of droplet manipulation using magnetic forces are discussed, ranging from conventional magnetic particle-based actuation to the recent development of ferrofluids and magnetic liquid marbles. This paper also discusses several new approaches that use magnetically controlled flexible substrates for droplet manipulation. In addition, we emphasize applications of magnetic digital Microfluidics in biosensing and medical diagnostics, and identify the current limitations of magnetic digital Microfluidics. We provide a perspective on possible solutions to close these gaps. Finally, the paper discusses the future improvement of magnetic digital Microfluidics to explore potential new research directions.
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fundamentals and applications of inertial Microfluidics a review
Lab on a Chip, 2016Co-Authors: Jun Zhang, Nam-trung Nguyen, Sheng Yan, Dan Yuan, Gursel Alici, Majid Ebrahimi WarkianiAbstract:In the last decade, inertial Microfluidics has attracted significant attention and a wide variety of channel designs that focus, concentrate and separate particles and fluids have been demonstrated. In contrast to conventional microfluidic technologies, where fluid inertia is negligible and flow remains almost within the Stokes flow region with very low Reynolds number (Re ≪ 1), inertial Microfluidics works in the intermediate Reynolds number range (~1 < Re < ~100) between Stokes and turbulent regimes. In this intermediate range, both inertia and fluid viscosity are finite and bring about several intriguing effects that form the basis of inertial Microfluidics including (i) inertial migration and (ii) secondary flow. Due to the superior features of high-throughput, simplicity, precise manipulation and low cost, inertial Microfluidics is a very promising candidate for cellular sample processing, especially for samples with low abundant targets. In this review, we first discuss the fundamental kinematics of particles in microchannels to familiarise readers with the mechanisms and underlying physics in inertial microfluidic systems. We then present a comprehensive review of recent developments and key applications of inertial microfluidic systems according to their microchannel structures. Finally, we discuss the perspective of employing fluid inertia in Microfluidics for particle manipulation. Due to the superior benefits of inertial Microfluidics, this promising technology will still be an attractive topic in the near future, with more novel designs and further applications in biology, medicine and industry on the horizon.
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MEMS-Micropumps: A Review
Journal of Fluids Engineering, 2002Co-Authors: Nam-trung Nguyen, Xiaoyang Huang, Toh Kok ChuanAbstract:Microfluidics has emerged from the MEMS-technology as an important research field and a promising market. This paper gives an overview on one of the most important microfluidic components: the micropump. in the last decade, various micropumps have been developed. There are only a few review papers on microfluidic devices and none of them were dedicated only to micropumps. This review paper outlines systematically the pump principles and their realization with MEMS-technology. Comparisons regarding pump size, flow rate, and backpressure will help readers to decide their proper design before starting a Microfluidics project. Different pump principles are compared graphically and discussed in terms of their advantages and disadvantages for particular applications.
John X. J. Zhang - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Advances in diagnostic Microfluidics.
Advances in clinical chemistry, 2019Co-Authors: Alison Burklund, Amogha Tadimety, Yuan Nie, Nanjing Hao, John X. J. ZhangAbstract:Abstract Microfluidics is an emerging field in diagnostics that allows for extremely precise fluid control and manipulation, enabling rapid and high-throughput sample processing in integrated micro-scale medical systems. These platforms are well-suited for both standard clinical settings and point-of-care applications. The unique features of Microfluidics-based platforms make them attractive for early disease diagnosis and real-time monitoring of the disease and therapeutic efficacy. In this chapter, we will first provide a background on microfluidic fundamentals, microfluidic fabrication technologies, microfluidic reactors, and microfluidic total-analysis-systems. Next, we will move into a discussion on the clinical applications of existing and emerging microfluidic platforms for blood analysis, and for diagnosis and monitoring of cancer and infectious disease. Together, this chapter should elucidate the potential that microfluidic systems have in the development of effective diagnostic technologies through a review of existing technologies and promising directions.
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Multi-Dimensional Nanostructures for Microfluidic Screening of Biomarkers: From Molecular Separation to Cancer Cell Detection
Annals of Biomedical Engineering, 2016Co-Authors: Elaine Ng, Kaina Chen, Annie Hang, Abeer Syed, John X. J. ZhangAbstract:Rapid screening of biomarkers, with high specificity and accuracy, is critical for many point-of-care diagnostics. Microfluidics, the use of microscale channels to manipulate small liquid samples and carry reactions in parallel, offers tremendous opportunities to address fundamental questions in biology and provide a fast growing set of clinical tools for medicine. Emerging multi-dimensional nanostructures, when coupled with Microfluidics, enable effective and efficient screening with high specificity and sensitivity, both of which are important aspects of biological detection systems. In this review, we provide an overview of current research and technologies that utilize nanostructures to facilitate biological separation in microfluidic channels. Various important physical parameters and theoretical equations that characterize and govern flow in nanostructure-integrated microfluidic channels will be introduced and discussed. The application of multi-dimensional nanostructures, including nanoparticles, nanopillars, and nanoporous layers, integrated with microfluidic channels in molecular and cellular separation will also be reviewed. Finally, we will close with insights on the future of nanostructure-integrated microfluidic platforms and their role in biological and biomedical applications.
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Multi-Dimensional Nanostructures for Microfluidic Screening of Biomarkers: From Molecular Separation to Cancer Cell Detection
Annals of Biomedical Engineering, 2016Co-Authors: Kaina Chen, Annie Hang, Abeer Syed, John X. J. ZhangAbstract:Rapid screening of biomarkers, with high specificity and accuracy, is critical for many point-of-care diagnostics. Microfluidics, the use of microscale channels to manipulate small liquid samples and carry reactions in parallel, offers tremendous opportunities to address fundamental questions in biology and provide a fast growing set of clinical tools for medicine. Emerging multi-dimensional nanostructures, when coupled with Microfluidics, enable effective and efficient screening with high specificity and sensitivity, both of which are important aspects of biological detection systems. In this review, we provide an overview of current research and technologies that utilize nanostructures to facilitate biological separation in microfluidic channels. Various important physical parameters and theoretical equations that characterize and govern flow in nanostructure-integrated microfluidic channels will be introduced and discussed. The application of multi-dimensional nanostructures, including nanoparticles, nanopillars, and nanoporous layers, integrated with microfluidic channels in molecular and cellular separation will also be reviewed. Finally, we will close with insights on the future of nanostructure-integrated microfluidic platforms and their role in biological and biomedical applications.
