Continuous Flow Pressure Driven Microfluidic Techniques for Point of Care Testing

¹ School of Engineering and Design, Brunel University, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge, UK
² University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos, Nigeria
¹ Tel.: +441895267378, fax: +441895258728

¹ E-mail: luck.ereku@brunel.ac.uk

Received: 10 February 2014 /Accepted: 7 April 2014 /Published: 31 May 2014

Abstract: The recent advent of the miniaturization technology witnessed over the last decades has led to development and creation of several conventional microfluidic techniques. A microfluidic platform can be broken down into a set of fluidic unit operations which are miniaturized versions of orthodox large scale (bio-chemical) laboratory operations. These miniaturized operations are designed for easy integration and automation within a well-defined fabrication technology; which permits simple, easy, fast, and cost-efficient implementation of different application-specific bio-chemical processes for point care diagnostics. Processes that can be automated at this scale include nucleic acid extraction, amplification and detection. The improvement in technology within the previous decades has led to significant developments of techniques used in implementing several microfluidic processes. The auspicious developments that have greatly impacted areas in medical research, therapeutics and POCT applications are brought into focus by this research on a continuous flow configuration. Through these visualization platforms such as pressure driven flow, magneto-hydrodynamics dielectrophoresis, large-scale integration are analyzed under continuous flow characteristics. Finally this review also provides adequate examples whilst investigating the strengths and limitations of every technique.

Keywords: Continuous flow, Pressure driven, Microfluidics, Point of care testing, Lab-on-a-chip.

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