The marriage of high performance optics with microfluidics could prove the
perfect match for making lab-on-a-chip technologies more practical.
Microfluidics, the ability to manipulate tiny volumes of liquid, is at the
heart of many lab-on-a-chip devices. Such platforms can automatically mix and
filter chemicals, making them ideal for disease detection and environmental
sensing.
The performance of these devices, however, is typically inferior to larger
scale laboratory equipment. While lab-on-a-chip systems can deliver and
manipulate millions of liquid drops, there is not an equally scalable and
efficient way to detect the activity, such as biological reactions, within the
drops.
