Hybrid Microfluidic Systems

Dear Colleagues,

One of the biggest promises ever made by microfluidics was the realization of lab-on-a-chip, a miniaturized versatile analytical platform. There are many demonstrations of such microfluidic chips, however, there is a continous effort to make these systems low-cost, portable, multifunctional, and easy to use. In this pursuit, the manufacturing of microfluidic systems has made remarkable progress. They are fabricated using photolithography, rapid prototyping, and 3D printing. The materials used to fabricate microfluidic devices range from silicon, glass, and polymers to paper, with their respective advantages. When different manufacturing methods or different material functionalities are combined, we obtain hybrid microfluidics enabling unique possibilites. In this Special Issue, the focus will be on novel design strategies that combine different manufacturing methods to fabricate a microfluidic system. The topic also includes creatively integrating microchannels with mechanical, electrical, optical or magnetic principle-based sensing and/or actuation systems into a microfluidic system. Furthermore, the efforts to miniaturize the external peripheral control systems to make the entire microfluidic system have a small footprint that enables portability, low power consumption, and user-friendliness are also covered.

Dr. Murali Krishna Ghatkesar
Guest Editor

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• Hybrid microfluidics
• Hybrid microfabrication
• Multimaterial microfluidics
• Multifunctional microfluidics
• Smart microfluidics
• Integrated microfluidics
• Hybrid digital microfluidics