August 25, 2008: Dolomite, a microfluidics company, in collaboration with the UK’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science have announced the development of a new generation of microfluidics-based environmental testing equipment for use in air quality monitoring.
Microfluidics is a field of science and engineering that enables very small-scale fluid control and analysis, allowing instrument manufacturers to develop smaller, more cost-effective and more powerful systems. With this lab-on-a-chip technology, entire complex chemical management and analysis systems can be created in a microfluidic chip and interfaced with, for example, electronics and optical detection systems.
Headed by Prof. Alastair Lewis, the team from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science is undertaking initial studies to evaluate the feasibility of developing a portable microfluidics-based environmental testing module. Today’s air monitoring procedure usually requires the collection of air samples at remote locations, which then have to be returned to a laboratory for analysis using gas chromatography instruments. The procedure is slow and costly. Professor Lewis’s research is aimed at developing a small-scale portable analysis system that will enable air quality to be analyzed and recorded in-situ. Such a system would have a dramatic effect on the speed of response to adverse changes in air quality.
“This is a great application of our technology,” said Gillian Davis, regional manager at Dolomite. “This is what microfluidics does best. It enables smaller, yet more powerful systems to be developed. Systems that may have been laboratory-based can become more portable or even hand-held, and at the same time can have increased accuracy and repeatability.”
For this project, Dolomite created a microfluidic device with a 7.5m micro-channel running through a 10cm square piece of glass — one of the largest devices and longest channels so far developed by the company — using fabrication processes similar to those used in the electronics industry. The channels are etched into materials such as glass or polymers using similar photolithography processes; the patterned layers are then aligned and fused together and drilled to provide microscopic ports through which the chemicals or gases can enter and leave the device.
In a statement , the company noted that the real challenge with this project was fusing the large etched glass plates. “Aligning the plates to ensure the etched microchannels were perfectly matched took a great deal of experience and put our capabilities to quite a test,” Davis said.
“We are very pleased with both the progress of our development and the excellent support we have received from Dolomite,” added Prof. Lewis. “Dolomite has been very responsive to our demanding requests and has helped us make significant progress in recent months. It’s clear from our research that microfluidics is very much an enabling technology for the next generation of environmental testing equipment. It offers us an exciting step forward in providing in-situ environmental monitoring capabilities with the possibility of more rapid response to adverse changes in air quality.”