Microfluidic Chips: Definition, Functions and Applications

A special issue of Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X). This special issue belongs to the section "B:Biology and Biomedicine".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2026) | Viewed by 571

Special Issue Editor

Liaoning Key Laboratory of Marine Sensing and Intelligent Detection, Department of Information Science and Technology, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian 116026, China
Interests: dielectrophoresis; microfluidics; lab-on-chip; particle manipulation and separation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

To achieve the precise manipulation and detection of micro- and nanotargets, LOC microsystems provide promising options due to their applications in the mechanical, medical, biological, and environmental fields. In all of these areas, the adoption of microfluidic devices transforms the efficiency of the reactive process or assay and analytical throughput. For biological and chemical applications, there is great interest in micro-/nanostructured channel systems and micro-/nanopatterned surfaces. To precisely control and manipulate these micro-/nanoscale targets and objects, microsystems, including microfluidic and nanofluidic platforms, provide a powerful and promising technique with great potential in the fields of chemical, biological, and environmental science. Accordingly, this Special Issue seeks to showcase research papers, communications, and review articles that focus on novel methodological developments by using advanced microfluidic systems for sampling and detection, with particular interest being paid to techniques for the manipulation, separation, characterization, and identification of microtargets.

Dr. Kai Zhao
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • manipulation and separation
  • microfluidics
  • micro-/nanofabrication
  • target manipulation

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

14 pages, 2860 KB  
Article
Design and Study of a Microfluidic Chip for Two-Stage Sorting of Oil Wear Debris Based on Magnetophoretic
by Zhiwei Xu, Hongpeng Zhang, Haotian Shi, Wenbo Han and Bo Liu
Micromachines 2026, 17(4), 397; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi17040397 - 25 Mar 2026
Viewed by 329
Abstract
Oil analysis is one of the main means to obtain the working status of important friction pairs in ship and Marine engineering equipment at present. Analyzing the wear mechanism by analyzing the particle size, morphology, properties and other characteristics of metal abrasive particles [...] Read more.
Oil analysis is one of the main means to obtain the working status of important friction pairs in ship and Marine engineering equipment at present. Analyzing the wear mechanism by analyzing the particle size, morphology, properties and other characteristics of metal abrasive particles in the oil is an important basis for achieving health monitoring and scientific maintenance of ship and Marine engineering equipment. Classifying the abrasive particles in the oil according to their particle size is an important step in sample pretreatment. This paper proposes a two-stage sorting microfluidic chip for wear debris based on magnetophoresis. By setting up external permanent magnets in a stepwise manner in the primary and secondary sorting areas, gradient magnetic fields of different magnitudes were formed. The effects of different sample flow rates, sheath fluid flow rates and sheath flow ratios on the pre-focusing before sorting and the sorting effect were studied. The primary sorting of ferromagnetic metal wear particles larger than 50 µm and the secondary sorting of those smaller than 50 µm have been achieved. The primary sorting can serve as an early warning for abnormal equipment wear, while the secondary sorting can provide data support for the scientific formulation of maintenance plans based on equipment requirements. This work provides a new idea and method for the rapid determination of lubricating oil contamination in engineering equipment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microfluidic Chips: Definition, Functions and Applications)
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