PARIS — British microfluidics developer Dolomite Ltd and the UK's National Center for Atmospheric Science have developed a generation of microfluidics-based environmental testing equipment for use in air quality monitoring.
With the codeveloped lab-on chip technology, partners claimed, complex chemical management and analysis systems can be created in a microfluidic chip and interfaced with electronics and optical detection systems.
The team of researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Science, led by Professor Alastair Lewis, said it is evaluating the feasibility of developing a portable microfluidics-based environmental testing module. This would facilitate the collection and immediate analysis of air samples at remote locations.
As part of the project, Dolomite said it has developed a microfluidic device with 7.5-m of micro-channel running through a 10-cm square piece of glass. The channels through which the fluids flow and interact are etched into materials such as glass or polymers using similar photolithography processes.
"The real challenge with this project was the fusing of such large etched glass plates," stated Gillian Davis, regional manager at Dolomite. "Aligning the plates to ensure the etched microchannels were perfectly matched took a great deal of experience and put our capabilities to quite a test."
