Sepsis, commonly referred to as blood poisoning, is a serious medical condition characterized by a whole-body inflammatory state caused by microbial infection. Rapid treatment is crucial, however, traditional culturebased diagnostics usually takes 2-5 days. The overall aim of the thesis is to develop microfluidic based sample preparation strategies, capable of isolating bacteria from whole bloo...

Background and Aims: Production of acoustic cavitation by sonication has been recently recommended as a targeted treatment. The experimental results from studies indicate that the activity of cavitation generated by bi- or multi-frequency ultrasound irradiation is higher than that caused by single frequency irradiation. In this study, effects dual (1 MHz and 40 kHz) and single frequency soni...

Stem cell research can significantly benefit from recent advances of microfluidics technology. In a rationally designed microfluidics device, analyses of stem cells can be done in a much deeper and wider way than in a conventional tissue culture dish. Miniaturization makes analyses operated in a high-throughput fashion, while controls of fluids help to reconstruct the physiological environments...

Digital microfluidics uses discrete samples of liquids or rather drops/droplets for performing the functions as those of continuous microfluidics discretely, analogous to the difference between Analog and Digital Microfluidics[1,2]. As in continuous microfluidics streams of liquids in micro-channels with flow rates in μL are used for analysis while in Digital Microfluidics individual droplets a...

Using polymer materials to fabricate microfluidic devices provides simple, cost effective, and disposal advantages for both lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices and micro total analysis systems (μTAS). Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer and thermoplastics are the two major polymer materials used in microfluidics. The fabrication of PDMS and thermoplastic microfluidic device can be categorized as fron...

This review discusses the application of microfluidics in chemical biology. It aims to introduce the reader to microfluidics, describe characteristics of microfluidic systems that are useful in studying chemical biology, and summarize recent progress at the interface of these two fields. The review concludes with an assessment of future directions and opportunities of microfluidics in chemical ...

Microfluidics enables biotechnological processes to proceed on a scale (microns) at which physical processes such as osmotic movement, electrophoretic-motility and surface interactions become enhanced. At the microscale sample volumes and assay times are reduced, and procedural costs are lowered. The versatility of microfluidic devices allows interfacing with current methods and technologies. M...