Advances in microfluidic devices made from thermoplastics used in cell biology and analyses

Abstract

Silicon and glass were the main fabrication materials of microfluidic devices, however, plastics are on the rise in the past few years. Thermoplastic materials have recently been used to fabricate microfluidic platforms to perform experiments on cellular studies or environmental monitoring, with low cost disposable devices. This review describes the present state of the development and applications of microfluidic systems used in cell biology and analyses since the year 2000. Cultivation, separation/isolation, detection and analysis, and reaction studies are extensively discussed, considering only microorganisms (bacteria, yeast, fungi, zebra fish, etc.) and mammalian cell related studies in the microfluidic platforms. The advantages/disadvantages, fabrication methods, dimensions, and the purpose of creating the desired system are explained in detail. An important conclusion of this review is that these microfluidic platforms are still open for research and development, and solutions need to be found for each case separately.

FIG. 1.

(a) Schematic view of the microfluidic system. (b) Photograph of the PMMA chamber. Reproduced with permission from Zhang et al., Lab Chip 6, 906 (2006). Copyright 2006 Royal Society of Chemistry.

FIG. 2.

(a) The 5 layers of the microfluidic device. (b) Assembled view of the temperature-controlled chip. Reproduced with permission from Lin et al., Electrophoresis 32, 3157 (2011). Copyright 2011 Wiley Online Library.

FIG. 3.

(a) Microwell designed chip. (b) Micropatterned chip. Reproduced with permission from Sakai et al., J. Biosci. Bioeng. 111, 85 (2011). Copyright 2011 Elsevier.

FIG. 4.

Chip test results for (a) A Rh⁺, (b) B Rh⁺, (c) AB Rh⁺, and (d) and (e) O Rh⁺ blood types, respectively. (e) and (f) Thalassemia samples with smaller RBCs and lower hematocrit. (d) Healthy blood sample and (f) (i) Normal blood sample (age 23; male) (ii) thalassemia blood sample (age 37; male). Reproduced with permission from Chen et al., Lab Chip 15, 4533 (2015). Copyright 2015 Royal Society of Chemistry.

FIG. 5.

The schematic illustration of the two-stage microfluidic system. Reproduced with permission from Hyun et al., Biosens. Bioelectron. 67, 86 (2015). Copyright 2015 Elsevier.

FIG. 6.

(a) The layers of the microfluidic system. (b) Assembled chip microphotograph. Reproduced with permission from Cartlidge et al., Sens. Actuators, B 239, 660 (2017). Copyright 2017 Elsevier.

FIG. 7.

The design of the centrifugal LAMP microdevice. Reproduced with permission from Seo et al., Sens. Actuators, B 246, 146 (2017). Copyright 2017 Elsevier.

FIG. 8.

(a) Mini-MFC schematic illustration. (b) Gold anodic layer on glass and PMMA anodic well layer. (c) Image of the bonded PMMA anodic well layer on glass substrate. (d) Metal straw sealed by silicon rubber to the anodic layer. (e) Assembled mini-MFC. Reproduced with permission from Chen et al., Biosens. Bioelectron. 26, 2841 (2011). Copyright 2011 Elsevier.