A review of microfluidic concepts and applications for atmospheric aerosol science

Abstract

Microfluidics is used in a broad range of applications, from biology and medicine to chemistry and polymer science, because this versatile platform enables rapid and precise repeatability of measurements and experiments on a relatively low-cost laboratory platform. Despite wide-ranging uses, this powerful research platform remains under-utilized by the atmospheric aerosol science community. This review will summarize selected microfluidic concepts and tools with potential applications to aerosol science. Where appropriate, the basic operating conditions and tunable parameters in microfluidics will be compared to typical aerosol experimental methods. Microfluidics offers a number of advantages over larger-scale experiments; for example, the small volumes of sample required for experiments open a number of avenues for sample collection that are accessible to the aerosol community. Filter extraction, spot sampling, and particle-into-liquid sampling techniques could all be used to capture aerosol samples to supply microfluidic measurements and experiments. Microfluidic concepts, such as device geometries for creating emulsions and developments in particle and droplet manipulation techniques will be reviewed, and current and potential microfluidic applications to aerosol science will be discussed.

On-chip density-based sorting of supercooled droplets and frozen droplets in continuous flow

“…82,[89][90][91] The identification and characterisation of the INPs present in the frozen droplet populations would then help to inform on their sources and global transport. It can also be foreseen that such analytical techniques could be translated onto an integrated microfluidic platform that combines the droplet freezing and separation steps with upstream aerosol collection [92][93][94][95][96] and downstream analytical processing, potentially yielding a micro total analysis system (μTAS) 97,98 for atmospheric INPs. Indeed, there are any number of on-chip microanalytical techniques that could be applied to the chemical or biological analysis of the separated populations.…”

Atomic Spectrometry Update – a review of advances in environmental analysis

“…Krause et al 8 Trends in the use of various analytical techniques for the characterisation of airborne particles were studied 9 (252 references) and a useful guide to the suitability of any given technique presented. Metcalf et al 10 reviewed (191 references) the potential use in aerosol measurements of microfluidics, the science of handling small liquid volumes. Techniques designed to capture small sample masses from air samples, such as spot sampling and particle-into-solution sampling, were most amenable to subsequent measurements using microfluidics.…”

Microfluidics Era in Chemistry Field: A Review

“…Besides the biomedical application, the paperbased microfluidic device has also been applied in the environmental field [74]. Ines et al (2018) reviewed the application of the paper-based microfluidic device for water analysis, such as organophosphate pesticide, benzo[a]pyrene, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate, base metal ions (Co(II), Zn(II), Fe(III) and Ni(II)) and heavy metals (Cd(II), Pb(II), Hg(II), Cr(VI) and Cu(II)) [75].…”