Applications of precise fluid control on microchips: category-biosensors

Demonstrations of microfabricated chemical instrumentation initially focused on chemical separations, first with chemical separations in the gas phase and later in the condensed phase with capillary electrophoresis. It soon became clear that microfabrication could be extended to include a much larger portion of the chemical measurement problem and the concept of the Lab-on-a-Chip resulted. The realization of the Lab-on-a-Chip requires the development of a number of functional elements or unit processes that can eventually be integrated to solve chemical and biochemical measurement problems. In this paper we describe two additional functional elements; electrokinetic focusing and enzymatic assays