Chapter 6
Materials and Surfaces in Microfluidic
Biosensors
Pandiaraj Manickam, Jairo Nelson, and Shekhar Bhansali
1 Introduction
Microfluidics is the science of designing, manufacturing, and formulating processes
to generate devices that are capable of analyzing small sample volumes, usually in
the range of microliters (10^6 ) to picoliters (10^12 ). Microfluidic techniques have
emerged as a promising alternative to conventional laboratory assays since they
allow complete laboratory protocols to be performed on a single chip, merely a few
square centimeters in size. Applied microfluidics have a number of significant
advantages in biomedical research and in creating clinically useful technologies.
For example, microfluidics enable the fabrication of new cost-effective biosensing
technologies for clinical diagnostics. This decrease observed in cost stems from the
small scale of the device’s architecture, which reduces sample volumes, processing
times, and reagent consumption when compared to conventional methods. At such
a small scale, material selection is a crucial part of microfluidic system develop-
ment as it impacts its processing, functionality, application, and the disposability of
the sensor strips and the fluidic manifold. This chapter reviews the most common
types of materials that are currently used to fabricate microfluidic devices. Methods
used for their fabrication, physical and chemical properties of the materials, and
advantages they provide to the biosensor configuration are also summarized.
Special consideration was also given to the selection of ideal prototyping materials
for specific applications based on their cost, mechanical, and biocompatible
properties.
P. Manickam (*) • J. Nelson • S. Bhansali
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Bio-MEMS and Microsystems
Laboratory, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA
e-mail:[email protected]
©Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
C.K. Dixit, A. Kaushik (eds.),Microfluidics for Biologists,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40036-5_6
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