Bioanalysis in structured microfluidic systems

Microfluidic and lab-on-a-chip devices have attracted widespread interest in separation sciences and bioanalysis. Recent designs in microfluidic devices extend common separation concepts by exploiting new phenomena for molecular dynamics on a length scale of 10 μm and below, giving rise to novel manipulation tools and nonintuitive phenomena for microseparations. Here, we focus on three very recent developments for bioseparations based on tailored microfluidic systems: Single cell navigation, trapping and steering with subsequent on-chip lysis, protein separation and LIF detection (Section 3.1), then we report dielectrophoretic trapping and separation of large DNA fragments in structured microfluidic devices (Section 3.2). Finally, a paradoxial migration phenomenon based on thermal fluctuations, periodically arranged microchannels and a biased alternating current electric field is presented in Section 3.3.