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Integrated nanoliter systems

Nature Biotechnology volume 21, pages 1179–1183 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

Microfluidic chip platforms for manipulating liquid volumes in the nanoliter range are slowly inching their way into mainstream genomic and proteomic research. The principal challenge faced by these technologies is the need for high-throughput processing of increasingly smaller volumes, with ever higher degrees of parallelization. Significant advances have been made over the past few years in addressing these needs through electrokinetic manipulation, vesicle encapsulation and mechanical valve approaches. These strategies allow levels of integration density and platform complexity that promise to make them into serious alternatives to current robotic systems.

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Figure 1: Optical micrograph of a nanofluidic system that can be used for parallelized high-throughput screening of fluorescence-based single-cell assays.
Figure 2: Automated microfluidic single-cell analysis device.
Figure 3: Parallel processing with nanoliters.
Figure 4: The analog of Moore's Law for nanofluidic systems.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the various members of the Quake group, past and present, for many stimulating discussions.

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  1. Department of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, MC 128-95, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    Jong Wook Hong & Stephen R Quake

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  1. Jong Wook Hong
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Correspondence to Stephen R Quake.

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Hong, J., Quake, S. Integrated nanoliter systems. Nat Biotechnol 21, 1179–1183 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt871

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