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Microfluidics

Exploiting elephants in the room

Nature volume 464, pages 839–840 (2010)Cite this article

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Microfluidic devices have many applications in chemistry and biology, but practical hitches associated with their use are often overlooked. One such device that optimizes catalysts tackles these issues head-on.

Reporting in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Kreutz et al.1 describe their use of an 'evolutionary' algorithm, implemented in a microfluidic system, to discover active catalysts. The algorithm mimics genetic processes associated with reproduction, so that variations in selection pressure allow improved formulations of a multicomponent catalyst to be developed with each iteration of the algorithm. This approach leverages the high-throughput nature of microfluidics for testing large numbers of formulations, and so allows the rapid screening of catalysts using reactive systems that were previously considered to be too time-consuming for this purpose.

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Figure 1: Screening catalysts in a microfluidic device.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Robert C. R. Wootton is at the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool L3 3AF, UK. r.c.wootton@ljmu.ac.uk; ,

    Robert C. R. Wootton

  2. Andrew J. deMello is in the Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK. a.demello@imperial.ac.uk,

    Andrew J. deMello

Authors
  1. Robert C. R. Wootton
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  2. Andrew J. deMello
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Wootton, R., deMello, A. Exploiting elephants in the room. Nature 464, 839–840 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/464839a

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