Microfluidic Device: A Miniaturized Platform for Chemical Reactions

Abstract

Microfluidic devices, as a new miniaturized platform stemming from the field of micro‐electromechanical systems, have been used in many disciplines. In the field of chemical reactions, microfluidic device‐based microreactors have shown great promise in building new chemical technologies and processes with increased speed and reliability and reduced sample consumption and cost. This technology has also become a new and effective tool for precise, high‐throughput, and automatic analysis of chemical synthesis processes. Compared with conventional chemical laboratory batch methodologies, microfluidic reactors have a number of features, such as high mixing efficiency, short reaction time, high heat‐transfer coefficient, small reactant volume, controllable residence time, and high surface‐to‐volume ratio, among others. Combined with recent advances in microfluidic devices for chemical reactions, this review aims to give an overview of the features and applications of microfluidic devices in the field of chemical synthesis. It also aims to stimulate the development of microfluidic device applications in the field of chemical reactions.

Highly homogeneous bimetallic core–shell Au@Ag nanoparticles with embedded internal standard fabrication using a microreactor for reliable quantitative SERS detection

“…The microfluidic synthesis system is a miniaturized reaction system that reduces the traditional reaction system to operate nanoliter to microliter fluid in a micron-scale channel. 14,15 Compared with macroscopic reactions, microfluidic technology has excellent heat transfer and mass transfer rates in a micronlevel confined environment due to the miniaturization of its reaction devices, which can precisely control the exchange between substances and significantly shorten the mixing time, and ensure the uniform temperature of the entire reaction volume, which is suitable for precise regulation of nanomaterials. [16][17][18][19] In addition, the microfluidic platform can be designed and adjusted according to specific experimental requirements to isolate different steps in complex reaction schemes, to control the synthesis process more finely, and to realize multiple chemical reactions and the preparation of composite materials.…”

A multilayered cancer-on-a-chip model to analyze the effectiveness of new-generation photosensitizers

“…14 In addition, the use of the appropriate flow rate in the microsystem reflects the in vivo conditions of the flow of bodily fluids. [17][18][19][20] However, it is necessary to design the appropriate geometry of the microsystem to ensure good conditions for 3D cell culture. In the last few years, more microsystems have been used in cellular engineering, but the microdevices to create effective 3D cell models are still to be developed.…”

Electrokinetically driven continuous-flow enrichment of colloidal particles by Joule heating induced temperature gradient focusing in a convergent-divergent microfluidic structure

“…Microfluidic technologies have been widely demonstrated with the potential of accurate and fast analyses/diagnoses in biological and chemical sciences as well as drug discovery 1 – 3 . Basically, microfluidics aims to integrate multiple steps of analyte manipulations in conventional analyses, usually consisting of sample concentration, pumping, mixing, chemical reactions, separation, detection and so on, into a single microchip.…”