Michael Smith – Lab on a Chip Blog

Author Archive

HOT: Novel microsensor for heat transfer measurements in microchannels

21 Dec 2011

As more and more kinds of microfluidic devices are developed there is a growing need for sensors which can non-intrusively measure the heat and temperature effects taking place within them. To address this Hassan Peerhossaini and colleagues at the University of Nantes in France have developed a new kind of heat-flux temperature sensor based on thin-film thermoresistance technology.

The sensor consists of 40 gold thin-film thermoresistances (85 nm thick) on a borosilicate substrate (20 per side) which provide the temperature sensing points.

This paper reports the fabrication and characteristics of the sensor and describes its use to measure the heat transfer properties of straight microchannels 12.5 to 52.2 um high and 4 mm wide.

Want to find out more? Read the paper here.

A novel thin-film temperature and heat-flux microsensor for heat transfer measurements in microchannels
David Hamadi, Bertrand Garnier, Herve Willaime, Fabrice Monti and Hassan Peerhossaini
Lab Chip, 2012, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC20919E, Paper

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HOT: Gold compact disks in improved detection for cancer biomarkers

28 Nov 2011

Microfluidic devices in bioanalysis offer advantages in terms of high-throuphput and reduced costs per analysis. In this paper James Rusling and colleagues at the University of Connecticut use gold compact disks in the construction of inexpensive immunomicroarrays. They then used their devices for the electrochemical detection of the cancer biomarker, interleukin-6 in diluted serum.

Find out the details and read the article – Free for 4 weeks

Fabrication of immunosensor microwell arrays from gold compact discs for detection of cancer biomarker proteins
Chi K. Tang, Abhay Vaze and James F. Rusling
Lab Chip, 2012, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C1LC20833K, Paper

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HOT: A self-heating cartridge for molecular diagnostics

21 Jul 2011

A disposable, water-activated, self-heating, easy-to-use, device for nucleic acid amplification and fluorescent detection has been developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.

The device, which is the work of Haim H. Bau and colleagues, is self-contained, does not require any special instruments to operate and integrates chemical, water-triggered, exothermic heating with temperature regulation using a phase-change material (PCM) and isothermal nucleic acid amplification. The water flows into the exothermic reactor by wicking through a porous paper.

The device was shown to amplify and detect E. coli DNA and could detect as few as 10 target molecules in a sample. Future applications of this technology could include pathogen detection in blood, saliva, urine, food and water, and in settings far removed from the laboratory.

To find out more read the full article here

A self-heating cartridge for molecular diagnostics Changchun Liu, Michael G. Mauk, Robert Hart, Xianbo Qiu and Haim H. Bau

Lab Chip, 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C1LC20345B

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Pioneers of Miniaturisation Lecture 2011 – call for nominations

18 Apr 2011

The Pioneers of Miniaturisation Lecture is awarded annually to an early to mid-career scientist for extraordinary or outstanding contributions to the understanding or development of miniaturised systems. This year’s presentation of the award will take place during the uTAS conference in Seattle, USA in October 2011. The Lectureship is jointly awarded by the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Lab on a Chip journal and Corning Incorporated and includes $5000 ($2000 of which may be used to attend the µTAS Symposium).

Nominations are now invited for this award – the deadline for nominations is 20th May 2011. Full details of the criteria and how to submit the nominations are to be found on the Pioneers of Miniaturisation Lecture webpage which also provides more information about the award.

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New filters for fluorescence detection – UK special issue paper

14 Mar 2011

A simple technique for making non-emissive colour filters for microfluidics applications has been developed by John deMello and colleagues at Imperial College, London. Their approach, described recently in Lab on a Chip, employs a solely dye-based method to create high performance filters avoiding the expense and variability inherent in interference filters. The authors highlight the advantages of lower cost and lower auto-fluorescence which could be good news for the analytical chemistry community.

Read the full article here and why not take a sneak preview of the special issue in which it will be included, the UK 10th Anniversary issue, by reading the introductory Editorial by Andrew deMello and Hywel Morgan.

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Guess the baby competition – the answers!

11 Mar 2011

Congratulations to Professor Brian Kirby from Cornell who won the ‘guess the baby’ competition held during the microTAS meeting in Groningen and NanoBioTech conference in Montreux last year. Our lucky winner received a state of the art digital photo frame.

The competition, organized by Lab on a Chip Editor Harp Minhas, challenged participants to correctly match the name of a leading member of the microfluidics community with the childhood photo of that person. Why not take a look yourself and see how many you can correctly identify!

Find out more about what happened at microTAS by viewing the abstracts for free here and read about the Pioneer Prize winner, Steve Quake. Take a look at issue 6 of Lab on a Chip which includes an article covering the 2010 Art in Science Award given at mTAS 2010 and featured on the cover of this issue.

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Liquid metal electrodes in microfluidic devices

23 Feb 2011

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a faster, easier way to create microelectrodes, for use in microfluidic devices, by using liquid metal.

Read the full article by Ju-Hee So and Michael Dickey in the latest issue of Lab on a Chip here.

And why not check out some of the other articles in the same issue?

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Stephen Quake wins Pioneers of Miniaturisation Lectureship

15 Dec 2010

Congratulations to Professor Steve Quake from Stanford University who is the 2010 winner of the Lab on a Chip/Corning Inc. Pioneers of Miniaturisation Lectureship.

The prize was presented during the uTAS meeting held in Groningen, Netherlands this year. It is awarded annually to an early to mid-career scientist for extraordinary or outstanding contributions to the understanding or development of miniaturised systems and includes a prize of $5000 ($2000 of which may be used to attend the µTAS Symposium).

Professor Quake’s research interests include biological automation tools, microfluidic large scale integration (demonstrating the first devices with thousands of integrated mechanical valves), single molecule DNA sequencing and much more.

Take a look at the webpage for more details about the prize jointly sponsored by Corning Inc.

View the photos and further information from about the 2010 uTAS meeting in Gronongen.

Read Steve Quake’s recent article in Lab on a Chip with reference to ‘biotic games’

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Shrink Nanotechnologies/Corning collaboration

08 Dec 2010

A recent agreement between Shrink Nanotechnologies and Corning now means Shrink will be able to offer Corning’s complete SmartBuild Plug-n-Play Modular Microfluidic System to researchers. This system enables the building of larger lab-on-a-chip devices by connecting multiple components together and was developed by Corning’s Po Ki Yuen and colleagues.

Shrink Nanotechnologies was founded by Michelle Khine. With fellow colleagues at the University of California she devized the ‘shrinky-dink’ technology for production of custom microfluidic devices in minutes.

Read a fuller account of the Shrink/Corning collaboration and take a look at the Lab on a Chip articles featuring the ‘Shrinky-dink’ technology and the plug-n-play modular microfluidics system.

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Lab on a Chip Chair Wins Cotton Medal

01 Dec 2010

Lab on a Chip Editorial Board Chair, George Whitesides, will recieve the prestigious
2011 F. A. Cotton Medal at a ceremony at Texas A&M University in April next year.

Professor Whitesides is the Woodford L. & Ann A. Flowers University Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University whose broad research interests range from affordable health diagnostics for the developing world to probing the mysteries of the origin of life. The Cotton Medal, awarded for excellence in chemical research, is in memory of the late F. Albert Cotton, Professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M, and has been awarded annually since 1995.

Read Professor Whitesides recent Editorial in Lab on a Chip on ‘Solving problems’.

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