Microdevice platform

Ahmed, A., C. Bonner, and T.A. Desai. 2002. Bioadhesive microdevices with multiple reservoirs a new platform for oral drug delivery. J Control Release 81 291. 

Krulevitch, P., Benett, W., Hamilton, J., Maghribi, M., Rose, K., Polymer-based packaging platform for hybrid microfluidic systems. Biomed. Microdevices 2002, 4(4), 301-308. 

Desai, T.A., Deutsch, J., Motlagh, D., Tan, W., Russell, B., Microtextured cell culture platforms Biomimetic substrates for the growth of cardiac myocytes and fibroblasts. Biomed. Microdevices 1999, 2(2), 123-129. 

Figure 1. Insect-Micro Air Vehicles and Micro-platform. (A) Live Insect-MAVs with microdevice. (B) A schematic view of the developmental stages of a Manduca sexta moth. Insertion of the microfluidic device is conducted at the pupal stage of development.

Polymer microchips are expected to conhibute strongly in biological analysis in the postgenome era, especially in the field of proteomics. Considerable research has already focused on separations, the use of new materials, and transferring conventional analysis methods to a microchip platform, but more work remains to be done to enable the exploitation of the full potential of plastic microdevices. In particular, the use of conventional device-bonding techniques has limited the broad application of polymer microchips. 

MicroChannel platform for the study of endothelial cell shape and function. Biomed Microdevices 4(1) 9-16... 

Micromechanical stimulator devices have been fabricated and used to precisely assess the mechanical strain effects on the two-dimensional ceU cultures. For instance, a high-throughput perfusi(Mi-based micro-bioreactor platform was developed to exert uniform tensile strain in a controUable maimer to the attached cells within the central circular membrane (Fig. 1). This microdevice was capable of applying tensile strain similar to that experienced by the articular chondrocytes during walking in human and was used to demonstrate the effect of tensile strain on the physiology of bovine articular chondrocytes. 

Cellular Mechanotransduction in Microfluidic Systems, Fig. 1 High-throughput perfusion-based microbioreactor platform capable of exerting uniform tensile strain, (a) Schematic illustration of the microdevice... 

Besides that, compressive force can be manipulated to facilitate cell lysis and collect their cellular components for later cell-based assay. Similarly, Wang et al. fabricated a micromechanical stimulator fliat is capable of providing controlled compressive or tensile strain to the cultured cells in vitro (Fig. 4). Experimental characterization of its PDMS membrane deformation showed that the microdevice can provide —6 % compressive to 25 % tensile radial strain to the cultured cells within the membrane center [6], which allowed simultaneous investigation of both mechanical strains on the same cells. Zhou et al. developed a microchip platform with microchannels that resembles the mechanical environment of small blood vessels in vivo (Fig. 5). They demonstrated that the deformation of the membrane by hydraulic pressure induced cyclic circumferential strains on the adhered mesenchymal stem cells and thus caused significant stmctural and biochemical changes to the cells [7]. 

Bead-Based Microfluidic Platforms Integrated Microdevices for Biological Applications Microdialysis... 

The idea followed under this section is to give an overview of the potential of electrochemical microfluidic devices as (bio)-sensor platforms devoted to agricultural and food analysis. Although these types of microdevices have been reported in an important number of published works, those associated to food analysis are very limited [57, 58]. Related to this scope, most of the published works fall within electrochemical microfluidic immunosensors. Relevant examples in food analysis will be given in this section. 

Both chromatography and electrophoresis separation techniques are implemented in analytical microdevices. However, without any doubt, microchip capillary electrophoresis is still the most used method within microfiuidic platforms for environmental analysis. In this section, an overview of the fundamentals and applications of CE microchips to environmental analysis will be presented and, in lower extension, some aspects related to electrochromatography and HPLC on chip. 

Before beginning our investigation on extraction of dielectric constant of PDMS, we present a method for wafer-scale microfabrication of patterned conductors on PDMS substrate. This technique serves as a platform for the realization of flexible RF microdevices and terahertz metamaterials to be discussed in the following sections. The technique was developed to be compatible with standard sihcon-based microfabrication processes [10, 19, 20]... 

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