An integrated digital microfluidic lab-on-a-chip for clinical diagnostics on human physiological fluidsThe Science and Application of Droplets in Microfluidic Devices.Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available: five video clips showing: high-speed transport of a droplet of blood across 4 electrodes; sample injection into an on-chip reservoir using an external pipette; droplet formation from an on-chip reservoir using only electrowetting forces; droplets moving in-phase on a 3-phase transport bus; and a pipelined glucose assay, showing sample and reagent droplet formation, mixing, splitting and colorimetric reaction. See http://www.rsc.org/suppdata/lc/b4/b403341h/

Clinical diagnostics is one of the most promising applications for microfluidic lab-on-a-chip systems, especially in a point-of-care setting. Conventional microfluidic devices are usually based on continuous-flow in microchannels, and offer little flexibility in terms of reconfigurability and scalability. Handling of real physiological samples has also been a major challenge in these devices. We present an alternative paradigm--a fully integrated and reconfigurable droplet-based "digital" microfluidic lab-on-a-chip for clinical diagnostics on human physiological fluids. The microdroplets, which act as solution-phase reaction chambers, are manipulated using the electrowetting effect. Reliable and repeatable…

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  GlaxoSmithKline
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  North Carolina State University