Chapter 2
Microfluidics Overview
Geeta Bhatt, Sanjay Kumar, Poonam Sundriyal, Pulak Bhushan,
Aviru Basu, Jitendra Singh, and Shantanu Bhattacharya
1 Introduction
Microelectromechanical systems and micro-fluidics are two fast emerging domains
in diagnostics research. The Microsystems technology emerged as a fall out of the
microelectronics industry mostly due to the obsoleteness of some of the microelec-
tronic processes owing to integration density issues. The area was first widely
explored in the mechanical and physical sensing domains and found wide interests
primarily because of low overall size, high yields of production and ability to
integrate with a variety of processes. The technology saw a turnaround towards
chemical/biochemical sensing starting from the end of 80s as prompted by the fast
molecular diagnostic requirements imposed by the gene sequencing industry
fuelled by the Human Genome project. Microfluidics is mostly concerned with
handling of miniscule samples of fluids of volume 10^9 –10^18 L which is well
suited to the handling of different expensive analytes important for diagnostics
G. Bhatt • S. Kumar • P. Sundriyal • P. Bhushan • J. Singh
Microsystems Fabrication Laboratory, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Uttar
Pradesh, India
A. Basu
Microsystems Fabrication Laboratory, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
Design Programme, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
S. Bhattacharya (*)
Microsystems Fabrication Laboratory, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Uttar
Pradesh, India
Design Programme, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
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_2
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