Integrated microfluidic devices

With the fundamentals of microscale flow and species transport well developed, the recent trend in microfluidics has been to work towards the development of integrated devices which incorporate multiple fluidic, electronic and mechanical components or chemical processes onto a single chip sized substrate. Along with this has been a major push towards portability and therefore a decreased reliance on external infrastructure (such as detection sensors, heaters or voltage sources). In this review we provide an in-depth look at the "state-of-the-art" in integrated microfludic devices for a broad range of application areas from on-chip DNA analysis, immunoassays and cytometry to advances in integrated detection technologies for and miniaturized fuel processing devices. In each area a few representative devices are examined with the intent of introducing the operating procedure, construction materials and manufacturing technique, as well as any unique and interesting features. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.