Microfluidic Devices Will Feature Lasers, Electric Fields

A team of scientists at the Purdue University is currently developing new technologies for use in microfluidic devices, and other similar instruments. The methods they are developing can be used to handle fluids and other tiny particles very efficiently.

Researchers are focusing their work on handling DNA, viruses and bacterial cells. Being able to manipulate them through the channels on a microfluidic device could make these devices a lot more efficient and reliable in their results.

Purdue professor of mechanical engineering Steven T. Wereley, the leader of the new research, believes that combining lasers and electric fields is the best way of achieving this groundbreaking capability.

He believes that the work has tremendous practical applications, ranging from improving the process of manufacturing drugs to increasing food safety and developing new, ultra-sensitive sensors. The new handling method is called “hybrid optoelectric manipulation in microfluidics.”

“This is a cutting-edge technology that has developed over the last decade from research at a handful of universities,” explains Wigner fellow Aloke Kumar, who is also a staff member at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

Kumar is also the lead author of a new paper detailing the technology, which is published as the cover story in the July 7 issue of the scientific journal Lab on a Chip. The magazine is edited by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RCS).

Contributors to the article include Wereley, Kumar, University of Louisville assistant professor of mechanical engineering Stuart J. Williams, National Cheng Kung University expert Han-Sheng Chuang and University of Southampton (UK) researcher Nicolas G. Green.

“A very important aspect is that we have achieved an integration of technologies that enables manipulation across a very wide length scale spectrum,” Kumar says of the new technology.

“This enables us to manipulate not only big-sized objects like droplets but also tiny DNA molecules inside droplets by using one combined technique. This can greatly enhance efficiency of lab-on-a-chip sensors,” he goes on to say.

Interestingly, the new approach to handling molecules can also be used to study fundamental questions in physics, such as for example the nature of electrokinetic forces that develop between molecules and biological structures.

“Thus there are very fundamental science applications of these technologies as well,” Kumar concludes.