Microfluidics: Emerging Tool in Point-of-Care Testing

A special issue of Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X). This special issue belongs to the section "B4: Point-of-Care Devices".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 December 2022) | Viewed by 2540

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
1. National Institute for Research and Development in Microtechnologies, IMT-Bucharest, 077190 Bucharest, Romania
2. Academy of Romanian Scientists, 050094 Bucharest, Romania
Interests: biophysics; microfluidics; micro & nanotechologies; lab-on a chip

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Guest Editor
1. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Micro/Nano Systems for Aerospace, School of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
2. Department of Microelectronics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Brno University of Technology, Brno 61600, Czech Republic
Interests: micro-electro-mechanical system; micro/nano fluid; microfluidic chip; polymerase chain reaction
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The current diagnostic instrumentation requires complex infrastructure, trained personnel, long processing time, and expensive reagents, most of these elements being unavailable in countries with low incomes. Point-of-care (POC) diagnostic devices may simplify the healthcare process and improve clinical outcomes to speed up a large number of medical tests. The main advantages of POC systems rely on their cost/time efficiency, portability, sensitivity/specificity, and user-friendliness. These characteristics make possible the use of POC systems, especially in low- and middle-income countries. A crucial aspect for the future of POC technologies is microfluidics, primarily due to its intrinsic features such as low consumption of reagents and sample, miniaturization of the device, and fast turnaround time for analysis. Recently, POC devices incorporating both disposable sensors and microfluidic modules became commercially available (Metrika, Biosite, iSTAT, Bosch, and Unipath). The POC market is estimated to be over $10 billion, with sensitive growth in the coming years. This Special Issue of Micromachines targets recent technologies and device advancements in point-of-care microfluidic-based diagnostics. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Basic microfluidics tools involved in POC testing (materials, fabrication, surface modification, detection techniques)
  • New detection strategies
  • Applications in nucleic acid-based molecular diagnostics
  • Applications in immunoassays and clinical chemistry
  • Applications in a single cell and cell analysis
  • Applications in food safety
  • Applications in global health.

Dr. Ciprian Iliescu
Prof. Dr. Pavel Neuzil
Dr. Yi Zhang
Guest Editors

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

19 pages, 7670 KiB  
Article
A Disposable Electromagnetic Bi-Directional Micropump Utilizing a Rotating Multi-Pole Ring Magnetic Coupling
by Chao Qi, Naohiro Sugita and Tadahiko Shinshi
Micromachines 2022, 13(10), 1565; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi13101565 - 21 Sep 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2044
Abstract
Electromagnetic bi-directional micropumps (EMBM) are indispensable for the development of portable devices which enable fluid transportation in forward and reverse directions. However, the high disposal cost of rare-earth magnets attached to the fluidic part and the low pump density due to multiple motors [...] Read more.
Electromagnetic bi-directional micropumps (EMBM) are indispensable for the development of portable devices which enable fluid transportation in forward and reverse directions. However, the high disposal cost of rare-earth magnets attached to the fluidic part and the low pump density due to multiple motors limit their practical application in disposable multi-channel microfluidic applications such as droplet-based oscillatory-flow (DBOF) rapid PCR amplification. Therefore, this paper presented a low-cost, disposable, high-pump-density EMBM. To reduce the disposal cost, we separated the magnets from the disposable fluidic part and used cylindrical holes to store and guide the magnet, which resulted in the ability to reuse all the magnets. To increase the pump density, we used the combination of one motor and one multi-pole ring magnet to drive several channels simultaneously. A proof-of-concept prototype with a pump density of 0.28 cm−2 was fabricated and experimentally evaluated. The fabricated micropump exhibited a maximum flow rate of 0.86 mL/min and a maximum backpressure of 0.5 kPa at a resonant frequency around 50 Hz. The developed multi-channel micropump with reusable magnets is highly beneficial to the development of low-cost and high-throughput rapid PCR amplification microchips and therefore can have a significant impact on timely infectious disease recognition and intervention. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microfluidics: Emerging Tool in Point-of-Care Testing)
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