Electrokinetic microfluidics

芯片实验室（Lab-on-a-chip，缩写为CXF）是一种微型实验室，位于名片大小的玻璃或塑料芯片上，具有微通道网络。沿沿着微通道施加电场控制芯片中的液体流动和其他操作。这些便携式设备可以像房间大小的设备一样执行专门的功能，例如细菌感染和癌症的临床诊断。其主要优势包括显著减少样品和试剂消耗、分析速度快、自动化和便携性。大多数生物医学分析涉及水溶液中分子和细胞的多种生物化学和物理过程。 因此，微流控装置必须将不同台式仪器的功能集成到单个芯片中，并且可以执行在芯片上实现测定所需的多个顺序的微流控过程。 为了能够系统地设计微流控器件并精确地控制芯片操作，必须了解复杂的微流体和纳流体现象和过程。

A lab-on-a-chip (LOC) device is a microscale laboratory on a business-card-sized glass or plastic chip with a network of microchannels. Applying electrical fields along microchannels controls the liquid flow and other operations in the chip. These LOC devices can perform specialized functions as their room-sized counterparts, such as clinical diagnoses of bacteria infection and cancers. The key advantages include dramatically reduced sample and reagent consumption, high speed of analysis, automation and portability. Most biomedical analyses involve multiple biochemical and physical processes of molecules and cells in aqueous solutions. A LOC device therefore must integrate the functions of different bench-top instruments into a single chip, and can perform multiple, sequential microfluidic processes required for realizing the assays on a chip. In order to be able to systematically design LOC devices and control the chip operation precisely, one must understand the complicated microfluidic and nanofluidic phenomena and processes.