Lab on a Chip Blog

On the back cover of Issue 22 we’re featuring research from the Micro and Nano-Scale Transport Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta.

The Reservoir-on-a-Chip, or ROC for short, by Sushanta K. Mitra et al. is a novel miniaturization approach to study oil recovery in a microfluidic device, mimicking the pore structure of a naturally occurring oil-bearing reservoir rock in an etched silicon substrate.  The device will enable researchers to better understand pore-scale transport relevant to reservoir engineering.

Download the article for the details:

Reservoir-on-a-Chip (ROC): A new paradigm in reservoir engineering
Naga Siva Kumar Gunda, Bijoyendra Bera, Nikolaos K. Karadimitriou, Sushanta K. Mitra and S. Majid Hassanizadeh
Lab Chip, 2011, 11, 3785-3792
DOI: 10.1039/C1LC20556K

On the outside front cover of Issue 22 we have an image from Aleksei Aksimentiev (University of Illinois) et al. highlighting their work modelling the transport of solutes through nanochannels with sticky surfaces.  Their method allows Brownian dynamics simulations of nanofluidic systems with retention of atomic-scale precision in the description of solute interactions, without incurring the huge cost of molecular dynamics simulations.

Atoms-to-microns model for small solute transport through sticky nanochannels
Rogan Carr, Jeffrey Comer, Mark D. Ginsberg and Aleksei Aksimentiev

On the inside front cover a paper from Carolyn Ren and colleagues at the University of Waterloo is displayed.  They have sought to understand the chaos that can be created at junctions in microfluidic channels and have developed a model to describe droplet sorting in different geometries, droplet resistances and pressures.

Passive droplet trafficking at microfluidic junctions under geometric and flow asymmetries
Tomasz Glawdel, Caglar Elbuken and Carolyn Ren

View the rest of the issue online here

On the front cover of Issue 21 Hatice Altug et al. demonstrate the first example of a large-scale plasmonic microarray with over one million sensors on single microscope slide.

Large-scale plasmonic microarrays for label-free high-throughput screening
Tsung-Yao Chang, Min Huang, Ahmet Ali Yanik, Hsin-Yu Tsai, Peng Shi, Serap Aksu, Mehmet Fatih Yanik and Hatice Altug
Lab Chip, 2011, 11, 3596-3602
DOI: 10.1039/C1LC20475K

The inside front cover highlights the review from Jurgen Popp on droplet-based microfluidic systems in Raman and SERS.

Droplet formation via flow-through microdevices in Raman and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy—concepts and applications
Anne März, Thomas Henkel, Dana Cialla, Michael Schmitt and Jürgen Popp
Lab Chip, 2011, 11, 3584-3592
DOI: 10.1039/C1LC20638A

And on the back cover is work from Piotr Garstecki et al.  showing their results on the speed of individual droplets in microfluidic channels – revealing quite a complex landscape of functional dependencies.

Speed of flow of individual droplets in microfluidic channels as a function of the capillary number, volume of droplets and contrast of viscosities
Slawomir Jakiela, Sylwia Makulska, Piotr M. Korczyk and Piotr Garstecki
Lab Chip, 2011, 11, 3603-3608
DOI: 10.1039/C1LC20534J

As with all our cover article, these are free to access for the next 6 weeks.

On the cover of Issue 20 we have hot articles from Ye and Demirci et al., Liu and Kokini et al. and Ren and Wu et al.

The outside front cover depicts Bin Ye and Utkan Demirci‘s paper where they have demonstrated that a mobile phone can be used to image and process the results of an ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) test on a microchip, reducing previously bulky equipment to a size where it could be used at the bedside.

Integration of cell phone imaging with microchip ELISA to detect ovarian cancer HE4 biomarker in urine at the point-of-care
ShuQi. Wang, Xiaohu Zhao, Imran Khimji, Ragip Akbas, Weiliang Qiu, Dale Edwards, Daniel W. Cramer, Bin Ye and Utkan Demirci
Lab Chip, 2011, 11, 3411-3418

The inside front cover highlights green microfluidic research from Gang Logan Liu and Jozef L. Kokini, where they have used a by-product from corn – zein – instead of the traditional plastics to produce a microfluidic device.  This article was also highlighted in Chemistry World.

Green microfluidic devices made of corn proteins
Jarupat Luecha, Austin Hsiao, Serena Brodsky, Gang Logan Liu and Jozef L. Kokini
Lab Chip, 2011, 11, 3419-3425

And on the back cover is work from Hongwen Ren and Shin-Tson Wu where they report a novel approach which can extensively spread a liquid crystal interface, which opens a route to new voltage controllable, polarization-insensitive, and broadband liquid photonic devices.

Voltage-expandable liquid crystal surface
Hongwen Ren, Su Xu and Shin-Tson Wu
Lab Chip, 2011, 11, 3426-3430